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THE EDUCATION OF THE 
AMERICAN CITIZEN 



THE EDUCATION 

OF 

IHE AMERICAN CITIZEN 



BY 
ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY 

President of Yale University 

AUTHOR OF "economics: AN ACCOUNT OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 

PRIVATE PROPERTY AND PUBLIC WELFARE," "RAILROAD 

TRANSPORTATION: ITS HISTORY AND ITS LAWS " 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1901 



o 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copiea Received 

SEP. 14 1901 

COPVRIQHT ENTRY 

CLASS &- XXc. Na, 
COP^Y B. 



V >^" 



^ 



Copyright, 1901, 
By Yale University 

Published, September, igoi 



UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



PREFACE 

In many of the political writiags of the day, there is 
a tendency to lay too much stress on the mechanism of 
government and of industry, and too little stress on the 
force by which this mechanism is kept at work. In 
recent educational movements, also, too much thought 
is perhaps given to the problem of preparing men and 
women to take their several places in a social machine, 
and too little to the development of that power and spirit 
upon which the perpetuation of our whole social order 
depends. 

From my public addresses and magazine articles of 
the past few years, I have tried to select those which 
emphasize the more neglected side of these questions, and 
to arrange them in a continuous series. In a book thus 
prepared, it is inevitable that there should be some repe- 
tition and some apparent inconsistencies. If the reader 
is perplexed by any of these things, he will perhaps find 
the explanation in the date of the different utterances 
and the special conditions under which they were made 
public. 

No sharp line can be drawn between those papers 
which are political and those which are educational. It 
is becoming evident that the really difficult political 

vii 



PREFACE 

problems of the day can be solved only by an educational 
process. Not by the axioms of metaphysics on the one 
hand, nor by the machinery of legislation on the other, 
can we deal with the questions which vex human society. 
We must rely on personal character; and as new diffi- 
culties arise, we must develop our standard of character 
to meet them. It is also becoming evident that the real 
test of an educational system lies in its training of the 
citizen to meet political exigencies. If it accomplishes 
this result, it is fundamentally good, whatever else it 
may leave undone ; if it fails at this cardinal point, no 
amount of excellence in other directions can save it from 
condemnation. 

This book is offered to the public in the hope that it 
may contribute something to the understanding of our 
political needs, to the growth of a public sentiment 
which shall give us power to meet those needs, and to 
the development of those educational methods which 
shall make for an increase of such power in the years 
which are to come, 

Yale University, New Haven, 
April, 1901. 



vm 



CONTENTS 



Page 
THE DEMANDS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY . 1 

An Address delivered before The New England Soci- 
ety of New York City, December 22, 1900. 

OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL MORALITY . '. 6 

An Address delivered before the Convocation of the 
University of Chicago, January 2, 1900. 

GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION 17 

An Address delivered at the Charter Day Exercises 
of the University of California, March 23, 1901. 

THE FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS . . 34 

Scribner's Magazine, November, 1899. 

SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 51 

Forum, October, 1894. 

THE RELATION BETWEEN ECONOMICS AND POLI- 
TICS 64 

Opening Address at the meeting of the American Eco- 
nomic Association, New Haven, December 27, 1898. 

ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY 83 

Opening Address at the meeting of the American Eco- 
nomic Association, Ithaca, December 27, 1899. 

ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 100 

Yale Review, November, 18D2; February, 1893. 
ix 



CONTENTS 

Page 
POLITICAL EDUCATION 135 

An Address delivered at the celebration of Founders' 
Day, Vassar College, April 27, 1900. 

THE RELATION BETWEEN HIGHER EDUCATION 

AND THE PUBLIC WELFARE 150 

An Address delivered before the Connecticut State 
Board of Agriculture, December 11, 1900. 

THE DIRECTION OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
DEVELOPMENT 161 

An Address delivered at the Twenty-fifth Anniversary 
of the Founding of Vanderbilt University, October 
23, 1900. 

FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN SCHOOL EDU- 
CATION 175 

An Address delivered before a meeting of teachers at 
Norfolk, Connecticut, November 20, 1900. 

THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS . . 191 
A Paper read before the Department of Superinten- 
dence, National Educational Association, February 
26, 1901. 

YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT .... 210 
Inaugural Address as President of Yale University, 
October 18, 1899. 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN 
CITIZEN 



THE DEMANDS OF THE TWENTIETH 
CENTURY 

It sometimes happens that the meaning of a great 
anniversary is for a time partly lost; and then found 
once more, when some renewal of the old conditions 
arises, and it becomes an inspiration for the present 
as well as a remembrance of the past. Such was the 
fate of the birthday of our national independence. 
During the first half of the nineteenth century the 
celebration of the Fourth of July grew more and 
more perfunctory. To those who knew not what it 
meant to fight for an idea, the memory of Revolu- 
tionary heroes became obscured; their principles be- 
came mere phrases, from which the vital substance 
had gone out. But under the stress of another great 
war, with the new emotions which it excited, tliis an- 
niversary at once rose into something more than an 
empty form of commemoration of the dead, and made 
itself an occasion of patriotism in the living. 

So it has been, to some extent, with Forefathers' 
Day, and the annual celebrations which attend it. There 
has been at times a somewhat perfunctory character in 
our remembrance of the Puritan, both of the old England 
and of the new. Although we have not ceased to render 
him gratitude for the hardships which he bore in order 
that his descendants might live a Hfe of freedom, we 
have in some measure lost personal contact with the 
1 1 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

man and understanding of what he really was. By- 
nine persons out of ten, the Puritans of the seven- 
teenth century are remembered chiefly for the pattern 
of their clothes or the phraseology of their creeds; 
and even the tenth man who really goes below the 
surface often lays wrong emphasis on the different parts 
of their activity, and fails to understand the true reason 
of their power. He thinks of the Puritan not so much 
for what he did as for what he refused to do and forbade 
others to do; as one who held himself aloof from the 
joys of hfe and apart from the sympathies of humanity. 

Not in such restrictions and refusals was the strength 
of the Puritan character founded. Not by any such 
negative virtue did he conquer the world. The true 
Puritan was intensely human — a man who " ate when 
he was hungry, and drank when he was thirsty ; loved 
his friends and hated his enemies." If he submitted to 
self-imposed hardships, and practised abstention where 
others allowed themselves latitude, it was not because 
he had less range of interest than his fellows, but be- 
cause he had more range. He did these things as a 
means to an end. His thoughts went beyond the limits 
of the single day or the single island. He was a man 
who considered power as more than possession, princi- 
ples as better than acquirements, public duty as para- 
mount to personal allegiance. He regarded himself as 
part of a universe under God's government. For the 
joy of taking his place in that government he steeled 
himself to a temper which spared not his own body nor 
that of others. His Hfe, with all its powers, was held in 
trust. To the fulfilment of this trust he subordinated 
all considerations of personal pleasure. 

Men are always divided more or less clearly into two 
types, — those who recognize this character of life as a 

2 



THE DEMANDS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

trust, and those who fail to recognize it. But not in all 
ages and in all countries does the distinction between 
the two types manifest itself sharply in historic action. 
Often the range of possible interests is so small, and the 
conduct of life so bound down by conventions, that the 
man who would pursue pleasure finds no opportunity for 
adventure, nor does the man who is ready to accept large 
trusts find occasion for their exercise. But in England, 
at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the dis- 
covery of new worlds abroad and the development of 
new problems at home gave opportunity for this diver- 
gence of character to show itself to the utmost. The 
explorer who journeyed for adventure or for gain was 
differentiated from him who journeyed for freedom's 
sake. The citizen who was ready to seek his fullest en- 
joyment in the old political order was separated from 
him who would hazard that enjoyment for what he be- 
lieved to be eternal principles of human government. It 
was because England had men of the latter type that her 
subsequent progress as a free nation has been realized. 
It was the Puritan who, by subjecting his power and 
his love of life to self-imposed restraints, made freedom 
possible in two hemispheres. 

Once more we are come to a similar parting of the 
ways. The close of the nineteenth century has wit- 
nessed an expansion of the geographical boundaries of 
men's interests comparable only to that which came three 
hundred years earlier, in the days of Queen Elizabeth. 
It is for the next generation to decide how these new 
fields shall be occupied. Shall it be to gratify ambition, 
commercial and political? or shall it be to exercise a 
trust which has been given us for the advancement of 
the human race ? Shall we enter upon our new posses- 
sions in the spirit of the adventurer, or in the spirit of 

3 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

the Puritan? The conflict between these two views will 
be the really important issue in the complex maze of 
international relations during the half-century which is 
to come. The outcome of this conflict is Hkely to 
determine the course of the world's history for ages 
thereafter. 

Nor is it in international pohtics and in problems of 
colonization alone that this issue is arising between those 
who regard the world as a field for pleasure and those 
who regard it as a place for the exercise of a trust. The 
development of modern industry has placed the alter- 
native even more sharply before us in the ordering of 
our life at home. The day is past when the automatic 
action of self-interest could be trusted to regulate prices, 
or when a few simple principles of commercial law, if 
properly applied, secured the exercise of justice in matters 
of trade. The growth of large industries and of large 
fortunes enables those who use them rightly to do the 
public much better service than was possible in ages 
previous. It also permits those who use them wrongly 
to render the public correspondingly greater injury. No 
system of legislation is Hkely to meet this difficulty. 
The outcome depends on the character of the people. Is 
our business to be dominated by the spirit of the adven- 
turer, or by the spirit of the Puritan ? Shall we regard 
wealth as a means of enjoyment and commercial power 
as a plaything to be used in the game of personal 
ambition? or shall we treat the fortunes which come 
into our hands as a trust to be exercised for the benefit 
of the people, rigidly abstaining from its abuse our- 
selves, and unsparingly refusing to associate with others 
who abuse it? No American has a right to claim a 
share in the glory of the Pilgrim Fathers if he has any 
doubt concerning his answer. Let us throw ourselves, 

4 



THE DEMANDS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

heart and soul, on that side of the industrial question 
which proves us worthy of Puritan ancestry, — the side 
which regards wealth as a trust, to be used in behalf of 
the whole people and in the furtherance of the purposes 
of God's government. 

Abroad and at home the issue is defining itself. We 
have the chance to prove whence we are sprung. We 
cannot add to the glory of those whose deeds we cele- 
brate ; but we can help to carry their work one historic 
step farther toward its accomplishment. In the words 
of Abraham Lincoln, — no less appropriate now than in 
the day when they were first spoken at Gettysburg, — 
" It is for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining 
before us; that from these honored dead we take in- 
creased devotion to that cause to which they gave the 
last full measure of devotion; that we here highly 
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that 
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free- 
dom ; that government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 



OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL 
MORALITY 

An unusually well-informed foreign critic — Mr. Muir- 
head, whose character as a dispassionate observer is well 
attested by the fact that he has written several of Baede- 
ker's handbooks — has recently published the opinion 
that the standard of personal morality in America is 
decidedly higher than in England, that of commercial 
morality probably a little lower, and that of political 
morality quite distinctly lower. His statement, thus 
formulated, undoubtedly represents a consensus of 
opinion of well-informed observers on both sides of the 
Atlantic. The causes for this condition of things de- 
mand serious attention. A failure to carry into politics 
the same kind of ethical standard which is appHed in 
matters of personal morals implies, as a rule, that there 
is something in a people's pohtical conditions to whose 
understanding it has not fully grown up. Such a failure 
implies a defect in public judgment rather than a weak- 
ness in individual character. It indicates that we do not 
know what virtues must be exercised for the maintenance 
of organized society as well as we know what virtues are 
necessary to the harmonious living of individuals among 
their neighbors. 

The difference between standards of political morality 
and of personal morality attracted attention even in the 
days of Plato and Aristotle. From that time onward 

6 



OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL MORALITY 

every moralist who has really studied the subject has 
recognized that there were certain distinctive political 
virtues, elements superlatively necessary in the conduct 
of a good ruler or member of the ruling class, which 
may be relatively less important in matters outside the 
sphere of poHtics. What is to be regarded as par excel- 
lence the virtue of the ruler and the freeman is a ques- 
tion which is answered differently in different stages of 
society. In the earhest developments of civiUzation 
stress is chiefly laid on courage which can maintain 
authority; in a later stage greater importance is at- 
tached to the habit of self-restraint which will submit to 
the authority of a general code of law ; while in a still 
later development at least equal prominence must be 
given to public spirit, which mil use for a collective or 
unselfish end the measure of authority bestowed on each 
individual. American society has witnessed the passage 
from the first stage to the second ; much must be done 
before we have attained to the third. 

In the beginnings of civilization the virtue of courage 
is a necessary prerequisite for any and all government. 
When people so far emerge from superstition that they 
come to distrust the authority of the old priesthood, 
a strong and fearless hand is needed to create a recog- 
nized police authority which can repress license and 
disorder. Whoever has this courage will have the 
authority in his hands; for without it there is no 
authority at all. If it is possessed by but few, we shall 
have an oligarchy; the more -widely it is diffused the 
more nearly shall we approach democracy. So indis- 
pensable is such courage to the maintenance of social 
order, that society in its early stages vnW condone in the 
possessors of courage and fighting efficiency the want of 
many other virtues ; will let them vindicate the majesty 

7 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

of the law by hanging the wrong man if the right man 
is not to be found ; will let them assert their authority 
to make laws by an assumption of an authority in their 
own person to break the laws which they have made ; 
and will despise or suppress the " base mechanical " who 
would protest against this arbitrary infraction of legal 
principle. 

But the " base mechanicals," thus unceremoniously 
despised in a nation's beginnings, prove a necessity for 
its progress beyond those beginnings. The State, as 
Aristotle says, having begun as a means of making life 
possible, continues as a means of making life prosperous. 
When once the necessary basis of authority is estabhshed, 
that authority becomes with each generation more im- 
partial and more absolute, protecting the laborer as well 
as the soldier or politician. The brave citizen can in 
these later generations best serve the cause of his 
country, not by an excess of personal zeal in chastising 
those who do him wrong, but by a readiness to submit 
his claims to the arbitrament of tribunals which have 
been established for the determination of justice. Forti- 
tudo gives place to temperantia as the characteristic 
virtue of the freeman. This change is manifest in every 
department of human activity as soon as it advances 
beyond a certain rudimentary stage. Fighting ceases to 
be a matter of personal courage, and becomes a matter 
of discipline, so that the ideal soldier is no longer the 
leader of a cavalry charge, but the organizer of victory, 
who can give and take orders as part of a larger whole. 
Success in business is no longer the perquisite of the 
venturesome trader who starts on a voyage of explora- 
tion, but of the painstaking merchant who understands 
the laws of supply and demand, and can regulate his 
conduct by those laws. In short, the whole feudal 

8 



OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL MORALITY 

organization of society, where authority rests on courage 
and obedience is rendered in return for personal pro- 
tection, gives place to a newer and larger order, where 
the authority of permanent principles is recognized as 
superior to that of any individual, however courageous, 
and where obedience is no badge of servitude, but a duty \ 
wliich rests on every law-abiding citizen. 

Through these two stages, which it has taken Europe 
centuries to accomplish, America has been passing in a 
comparatively brief period. First we have had the 
lawless frontier community, where men have such 
rights as they can defend with their own revolvers ; 
where in case of emergency the vigilante, who takes 
the law into his own hands, is the most necessary of 
citizens ; where the necessity for the presence of Judge 
Ljmch is so sharply recognized that his occasional mis- 
takes are condoned; and where absence of power to 
insist on one's own rights is almost as bad as having 
no rights at all. With the necessity for more regular 
investment and employment of capital and the estab- 
lislmaent of the police authority which is coincident 
with that employment, the virtues and vices of the 
frontiersman pass out of political prominence, and we 
reach a stage where the standard of social success is 
found in playing with keenness the games of commerce 
and of politics ; where every man is expected to submit 
to the law of which he becomes a part ; but where, as 
long as he keeps within the rules set by that law, all 
things are condoned which do not pass that line of 
meanness or violent immorahty which disqualifies a 
man from associating personally with his fellow-men. 

The suddenness of the change has been attended with 
all the exaggeration to which sudden social movements 
are liable. In Europe the men who exercised authority 

9 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

in virtue of their courage were only gradually tlisplaced 
by those who did so in virtue of their astuteness. Tlio 
earlier standard of military virtue as a qualilication 
for social distinction persisted long after it had ceased 
to be the main requisite for success in business and in 
politics, or even in war itself. Traditions as to the use 
of wealth which had survived from earlier times exer- 
cised a potent influence even upon those who had 
amassed that wealth by the methods peculiar to later 
ones. A man who would have that standing in the 
community which for most men is the chief object of 
ambition was compelled to pay his respects to the past 
no less than to the present. In America the case was 
different. The flood of industrial settlement swept so 
rapidly into the districts which but a short time before 
liad been the habitat of the miner or tlie ranclunan that 
it obliterated as with a sponge the traces of the social 
order of a ruder time. Unhampered by precedent, each 
man set out to make his fortune in a world where all 
were from one standpoint peaceful citizens and from 
another absolute adventurers. Life in the half-settled 
communities of the United States became a game in 
a sense which it perhaps never had been before; ii 
game played by a series of accepted rules, and wliero 
no tradition or code of etiquette not incorporated in 
the rules counted for anything at all. The result has 
been an exaltation of the principles peculiar to one 
stage of the world's history to an unquestioned su- 
premacy which they have elsewhere souglit in vain. 

As long as the conditions remained wliich gave birth 
to this state of things — free land, abundance of oppor- 
tunities, a body of men possessed of physical and mental 
soundness, and starting to play the game with appi-oxi- 
mately equal chances — so long did the moral and pohti- 

10 



OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL MORALITY 

cal standards which were based upon these conditions 
prove themselves tolerably adequate for the purpose in 
hand. They might be criticised by outside observers as 
incomplete, wanting in background, crude, perhaps repul- 
sive ; but they at least enabled a vast social machine to be 
run with a great deal of aggregate happiness and mth 
less glaring violation of justice than had been exemplified 
in any other machine to which the critics could point. 

With a change in conditions this degree of success was 
less fully assured. And this change has already come 
about. Organization in business, in local poUtics, and 
in national politics has brought with it an inequality 
of opportunity and an unfairness of conditions under 
wliich the game of life is played. Competitive business 
is giving place to trusts. The town meeting has been 
supplanted by the organized municipality. The old 
federation of States, with its strong traditions of home 
rule, has become a centralized nation, reaching out be- 
yond its old borders to rule over other nations less 
civiUzed than itself. 

Under these circumstances it becomes impossible for 
the community to rest complacently in that egoistic 
morality which seemed sufQcient for the needs of a 
generation earlier. We can no longer rely on competi- 
tion to protect the consumers against abuse when in- 
dustry has become so highly organized that all production 
is centralized in the control of a single body. It is no 
longer true, in the sense that it was true fifty years ago, 
that each man may be left free to manage his o\vn busi- 
ness, and that the community will find its work best 
done as a consequence of such freedom. Commerce and 
industry are no longer to be regarded as games where 
we have nothing to do but to applaud the most skilful 
player when he wins, and rest in the assurance that his 

11 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

triumph is in line with the best interests of the com- 
munity as a whole. What once was regarded as a game 
has now become a trust; not merely in the superficial 
and accidental sense in which the name " trust " is 
applied to all large combinations of capital, but in a 
profounder sense, as a pubhc function intrusted to those 
who control large capital which they can exercise well 
or ill at their pleasure, without adequate restraint from 
any quarter. Where competition is thus become a 
remote contingency, and where law is almost necessarily 
inadequate unless it be made so strict as to forbid the 
good no less than the evil in private business enterprise, 
a new system of ethics is a matter of vital necessity for 
the American people. This new system must not regard 
the director as an individual pursuing private business 
of his own. It must not allow him to resent the sugges- 
tion that he shall conduct tliis business unselfishly. It 
must regard him as having moral responsibihties to his 
stockholders, to his workingmen, and to the consumers 
that purchase Ms goods or his services. In the absence 
of such an ethical advance, no poHtical or legal solution 
of the so-called trust problem is hkely to be effective. 
Demagogues will continue to meet it with prohibitions 
which do not prohibit. Visionaries will attempt to 
limit its abuses by semi-socialistic measures that are 
readily evaded. But each of these classes will tend to 
perpetuate the evils which it is trying to check. They 
are attempting to reform by improved legal machinery 
matters for which there can be no real remedy without 
improved commercial morality. 

Nor are we better protected against the abuses of 
public trusts than against those of private ones. Our 
old-fashioned methods of representative government 
have not proved adequate to guard us against the evils 

12 



OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL MORALITY 

incident to the working of administrative macliinery in 
our cities, our States, and our country as a whole. In old 
times legislatures were regarded chiefly as fields for 
debate between the champions of different interests. A 
representative assembly, whose members came from dif- 
ferent districts, was admirably adapted to secure this 
end. The presence of men from every locahty was 
sufficient protection against the adoption of measures 
through ignorance of the needs of the several sections 
to prevent that which would result in unfair sacrifices. 
But with the substitution of the work of actual govern- 
ment for that of discussion, the representative assembly 
no longer proves equally well adapted for our purposes. 
It becomes an arena for contests between confhcting 
claims, rather than for the interchange and reconciliation 
of differing views. It becomes a field where pohtical 
organization can exercise its fullest sway ; a field where 
the self-interest of the several parts, instead of becom- 
ing a means for the promotion of the welfare of the 
whole, becomes too often a means toward its spoliation. 
With the increasing scale on which public business is 
now conducted, it has undergone a change analogous 
to that which we see in private business. It has become 
a trust in a deeper sense than it was a generation or two 
ago. A wider discretionary power for good or ill is 
placed in the hands of those by whom the public affairs 
of the city or State are conducted. These affairs will 
not be safe while politics is regarded as a game, any 
more than private interests are safe wliile commerce 
is regarded as a game. Nor can they be made safe by 
any constitutional machinery, however well devised, 
unless we have the right kind of public sentiment 
behind it. A moderate degree of reform is indeed 
possible by fixing the responsibility in the hands of 

13 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

a single person instead of dividing it among so many 
as to neutralize at once the power for good and the 
accountability for evil. But this change, however salu- 
tary and even necessary in the conduct of municipal 
or State business, is far from meeting the whole evil. 
Until there is a fundamental reform in the code of 
political ethics which the community imposes upon its 
members, public trusts will be no more adequately 
controlled than private ones. Nay, they are likely to be 
even less adequately controlled; because a public offi- 
cial, holding his power as a tool of a ring and acknowl- 
edging no allegiance to standards higher than those 
which have made his organization successful, is as a 
rule more firmly intrenched in authority than the 
representative of any private corporation, however ex- 
tensive and powerful. Until a change of ethical ideas 
is effected, the socialistic ideal of reforming abuse of 
private trust by the substitution of public trust will be 
but a substitution of one set of masters for another. 

If tliis difficulty is felt in internal affairs, where those 
who suffer are at any rate citizens and men of action, 
with the power to make their protests heard even where 
they cannot make their resistance successful, much worse 
will it be in dealing with colonies and dependencies. 
The history of our Indian relations has proved how 
much real immorality may characterize the public deal- 
ings of a people who in their private deahngs with one 
another are habitually honest and straightforward. 
Whenever we govern a race so inferior that it is not, and 
in the nature of things cannot be, adequately represented 
in our councils, one of two things must happen : either 
it will be left a victim of the most unscrupulous office- 
holders — as in the case alluded to — or it will be cham- 
pioned by disinterested men, not as a means for their own 

14 



OUR STANDARDS OF POLITICAL MORALITY 

political success, but as a duty which they owe to their 
own moral natures. Under an imperialistic policy our 
government cannot remain what it was. It must grow 
either worse or better. It cannot remain a game, in 
which the struggle for success is as far as possible 
dissociated from the moral sense of the participants. It 
will involve either a direct breach of trust or a direct 
acceptance of trust. 

Our own experience with problems other than these, 
and the experience of England with this particular 
problem, both warrant us in the belief that we shall 
move toward a better solution rather than toward a 
worse. England's first political dealings in India were 
characterized by methods totally indefensible. The 
career of Warren Hastings is an example of how a 
really great man may be infected by a disordered public 
morality. But the very powerlessness of India to pro- 
tect itself against official abuse brought home to the 
English mind the fact that public unmorality meant 
pubhc immorality. We need not go so far as to assert 
that the reform of the English civil service and the 
purification of English politics were the results of ex- 
periences in India and the colonies. This is a dis- 
puted point. But we can at any rate see that the very 
weakness of England's dependencies has compelled the 
young men of England, as they go out into official 
duties in these lands, to adopt the position of pro- 
tectors, and the responsibility which attaches to such a 
relation, rather than the position of adventurers who 
seek their fortunes in the opportunity of personal gain. 
The development of this mental attitude was in some 
respects less difficult in England than it will be in 
America, because there was in England a survival of 
certain traditions from the earlier military age of society 

15 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

wMch. made social success depend far more upon the 
acceptance of responsibility than upon the achievement 
of eminence in busmess or in politics. Yet in spite of 
this difference, we maj' look forward to the future with 
confidence. A country like ours, which has in so many 
of its parts passed in a single generation from tlie law- 
lessness of frontier life to the legahty of organized 
commerce, may readily, in a generation more, pass from 
a conception of pubhc duty that is bounded by legality 
alone to one which is inspired by a sense of moral obli- 
gation ; and learn to carry into the conduct of pubhc 
affairs those principles and sentiments which we recog- 
nize as binding upon the indi^idual in his private deal- 
inofs %\'ith his fellow-men. 



18 



GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION 

There are two quite distinct theories of democratic 
government, — the individualistic and the sociahstic. The 
former relies mainly on the self-interest of the various 
citizens, acting independently, as a means of detennining 
and promoting the general welfare. The latter relies 
mainly on the votes of those citizens acting as a body. 
The individuaUst believes that the selfish conduct of 
each man and woman, if properly enlightened and sub- 
jected to a certain necessary minimum of restraint, can 
be trusted to work out results which will conduce to 
the good of the body politic. The socialist believes that 
this good must be sought by the collective action of the 
people ; and that the machinery of government, by giving 
effect to those measures which, after proper discussion, 
the majority of the people believe to be desirable, is the 
agency on which we must place our chief confidence for 
the solution of political and industrial problems. 

Most thoughtful men would agree that neither of these 
theories has proved wholly satisfactoiy. 

Of the individualistic theory, this is now quite univer- 
sally admitted. Even those who emphasize most clearly 
what self-interest has done for political and industrial 
progress are compelled to recognize that it will not do 
everything. Its successes have been great, but they 
have not been umnixed with failures. It is a powerful 
stimulant, but it is by no means that panacea for social 
3 17 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

ills which so many economists and moralists have con- 
sidered it. The exalted hopes of the individuahstic 
philosophers during the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury have been followed during the second half by a 
correspondingly depressing reaction. 

Down to the beginning of that century, business had 
been hedged about by a multitude of restrictions which 
had been thought necessary for the general good. The 
removal of these restrictions proved to be of great benefit. 
By giving a man, as far as possible, the right to enjoy 
what he produced, we furnished him the best motive to 
work. We were thus able to dispense with the necessity 
of serfdom, and obtained much more effective service 
under free labor than ever was possible under compul- 
sion. By guaranteeing a man the right to the un- 
hampered use of what he possessed, we stimulated the 
accumulation of capital, and thus developed new methods 
of production which helped the community even more 
than they enriched the individual possessor. We were 
able to arrange a system of competition which prevented 
trade from degenerating into a fight between buyer and 
seller, and utiHzed it as a means of mutual advantage. 
The institution of private property was thus made a 
vast machine for turning self-interest to the service of 
the body poHtic. The literature of pohtical economy, in 
the hands of Adam Smith and his successors, was occu- 
pied with developing the advantages of economic free- 
dom ; in other words, with showing how the enHghtened 
selfishness of each individual could be made to contribute 
to the good of others as well as of himself. 

Nor have these theories been confined to the field of 
economics. Outside of the realm of business, we have been 
developing a set of moral precepts based on enlightened 
selfishness. Instead of compelling the people to obey 

18 



GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION 

laws because they were imposed by a superior authority, 
we have striven to show that they have a personal inter- 
est in obeying such laws — that by a violation of pubHc 
advantage they will in the long run hurt themselves 
scarcely less than they hurt others. Not a few writers 
have gone so far as to proclaun that this is the only 
rational basis of social obligations, and that the attempt 
to impose any other theory upon a democratic commun- 
ity is an insult to its intelligence. 

The restrictions contained in the old systems of class 
legislation, both on business and on personal conduct, 
had been so arbitrary that their abohtion was of itself 
an improvement ; and a moderately enhghtened degree 
of seK-interest could hardly fail of producing better 
business and better conduct. But as matters have ad- 
vanced farther, we see that the consequences of this 
freedom, though preferable to the system which they 
superseded, are not in every respect ideal. What might 
result if all men were sufficiently intelUgent to work 
them out to the best advantage is a doubtful question, 
which I shall not attempt to discuss. What does result, 
under the existing degree of intelhgence, is a mixture of 
good and evil, better than that which existed a century 
ago, but far short of anything with which we can rest sat- 
isfied. Even in the field of economics we have learned 
that the coincidence of private interest and pubUc inter- 
est cannot be made complete. However much we may 
preach the blessings of competition, we find that there 
are many cases in which competition will not work. 
However warmly we may champion the benefits of free 
labor and free capital, we reach a stage of development 
where the one cannot be obtained without considerable 
sacrifice of the other. We have come to a point where 
we regard the principles of pohtical economy in their 

19 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

true light, as a valuable scientific discovery, but not in 
their false light, as a cure for every industrial wrong. 

The failure of the sociahstic principle of government 
by the will of the majority is less universally admitted. 
The theory seems so plausible that people are inclined to 
overlook its historical fallacies and its practical failures. 
Modern democracy has in its hands a vast poKtical 
machinery, the legacy left by the monarchical or aristo- 
cratic systems of government which it has superseded. 
The social democrats beheve that by the use of this 
machinery the voters can obtain all the benefits which 
the older systems enjoyed in the way of coherent power ; 
and that they can at the same time avoid the perver- 
sion of that power to destroy personal liberty, because 
authority is now vested in the whole body of citizens 
instead of in a single class. 

But the power for good, thus held by modern democ- 
racy, is in some respects more apparent than real. The 
machinery of government is a vast and complex thing, 
but it is not one which will run itself. It has to have 
force behind it. In a monarchy or an aristocracy it is 
easy to see where the force comes from. It is based on 
the superior military strength of a single individual or a 
single class. Where one man was pre-eminent above all 
others in his fighting power, he had the means of making 
his will respected at home no less than it was feared 
abroad. This state of things was seen in Homeric soci- 
ety. When Hector fell, all the Trojans ran; when 
Achilles fell, all the Greeks ran. It was a necessary 
consequence that the affairs of the home government 
were chiefly ordered by men like Hector and Achilles, 
in the interests of the famiUes which they represented. 
Where mihtary power was somewhat more widely dif- 
fused, there was a similar widening of political privi- 

20 



GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION 

leges. This was seen in the earlier days of the Roman 
republic. It was seen on a still larger scale in mediaeval 
Europe under the feudal system. In either case we had 
an order arranged chiefly for the benefit of the knights, 
who possessed the monopoly of fighting strength. Aris- 
tocratic government was an engine for keeping each man 
in his place in a social order of this kind. The selfish 
interest of the aristocracy formed at once the support 
and the danger of such an order. It was a support, 
because it made the government effective; it was a 
menace, because it insured its perversion in favor of a 
single class. 

The invention of gunpowder, and the other changes 
in military tactics, which made larger armies imperative, 
put an end to the monopoly of power which the knights 
had previously enjoyed. Democracy was an ahnost 
necessary consequence of this change. The growth of 
democratic government, with its system of general elec- 
tions, put an end to the possibility of reserving all poht- 
ical privileges for a single group. This is everywhere 
recognized. An equally important consequence, how- 
ever, which is not everywhere recognized, is that it 
did away with much of the force which the older gov- 
ernments had behind them. Except in those grave crises 
when a wave of patriotism sweeps over the community, 
the support on which a democratic government reUes 
is spasmodic and accidental. No man except the profes- 
sional pohtician feels that the government is being run 
in his particular interest. On none, therefore, except 
the professional politician can it rely for continuous 
activity in giving effect to its decrees. 

Yet more serious than this absence of compelling force 
behind a democratic government, as compared with an 
aristocratic or monarchical one, is the absence of conti- 

21 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

nuity of policy and tenacity of purpose. A small group 
of men knows what it wants. It pursues common in- 
terests, and it has the power to pursue them with an 
unwavering fidelity. We see this advantage illustrated 
when we compare the diplomacy of Russia, which is 
managed by a few men, with the diplomacy of England, 
which is under the control of a great many men. The 
diplomacy of Russia is steady in its purpose, ready to 
wait when waiting is needed, quick to strike when 
promptness is imperative; and it is intrusted, from be- 
ginning to end, to the hands of acknowledged experts. 
The diplomacy of England is, by contrast, vacillating of 
purpose, impatient of necessary delays, unready in the 
moment of action, and handled by men who are chosen 
for reasons not wholly connected with fitness for their 
work. What is true of England in this respect is in 
even larger measure true of the United States. And 
thus it happens that Russia, in spite of the inferior 
intelligence of her inhabitants and the lesser material 
resources at her command, is in a position to pursue 
diplomatic aims more surely and successfully than her 
rivals. If this condition shows itself in a field so re- 
stricted in its character as that of diplomacy, where the 
patriotism of the several countries enhsts their inhabi- 
tants in a common cause, what must we expect when the 
same difference of method is apphed to the whole field of 
domestic administration, whose purposes are infinitely 
complex, and in which the interests involved are diver- 
gent and antagonistic? 

In the face of these difficulties, it is obvious that 
democratic government, to be successful in what it un- 
dertakes, should be managed with great caution. With 
the inevitable changes of purpose due to the differing 
results of successive elections, it should confine its 

22 



GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION 

undertakings to those matters of policy which have been 
thoroughly discussed and have pre-eminently commended 
themselves to the whole people. With the deficiency of 
physical force for carrying its decrees into effect, it 
should endeavor to restrict its action to those fields 
where there is a sufficient consensus of opinion and a 
degree of acquiescence on the part of the minority wliich 
will render a preponderance of force unnecessary. But 
this caution is by no means characteristic of modern 
popular governments. " The new democracy," to quote 
the words of Lord Farrer, "is passionately benevolent, 
and passionately fond of power." Conscious of its 
honesty of purpose, it is impatient of opposition, and 
contemptuous of difficulties, however real. It under- 
takes a vast amount of regulation of economic and social 
life in fields where two generations ago a free govern- 
ment would scarce have dared to enter. In these new 
regulations there are many instances of failure, and rela- 
tively few of success. We have had much infringement 
of personal liberty, with little or no corresponding benefit 
to the community. Prohibitory laws applied to places 
where there was no pubhc sentiment behind them have 
proved a mockery. Anti-trust acts have been so system- 
atically evaded that they have degenerated into a means 
of blackmail ; and they have often been so injudiciously 
drawn that their enforcement would have paralyzed the 
industry of the community. There is no need to con- 
tinue the catalogue of appropriation bills and currency 
bills, and tax bills and labor bills, often devised with the 
best of intents of coercing the wicked, but ending in 
nothing except evasion and inconvenience. 

Nor is it really possible that most of them should end 
otherwise. A statute passed by a majority and in tlie 
face of a reluctant minority does not represent the will 

23 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

of the people. It is legislation in favor of one class, 
wliicli happens at the moment, through causes which 
may be good or bad, to control a greater number of votes 
at the polls, and against another class which can control 
a less number. Absolute majority rule, so far as it is 
really carried into effect, means tyrannical power in the 
hands of a weak and vacillating sovereign. There is a 
"curious poUtical superstition," to quote the phrase of 
Herbert Spencer, that such rule by majorities was a 
fundamental theory of those men whose work at the 
close of the last century emancipated America and 
Europe from the bonds of the aristocratic system. But 
history gives no warrant for this behef. Rousseau 
himself, the father of modern democracy, is explicit in 
saying that the wish or vote of a majority does not neces- 
sarily represent the will of the people. The Constitution 
of the United States, far from sanctioning unUmited 
rights of the majority against the minority, is filled from 
beginning to end with restrictions upon the exercise of 
such rights, — restrictions devised in the interest of per- 
sonal liberty. The Constitution indeed provides for elec- 
tions to decide who shall govern us ; but it in no wise 
encourages the intrusion of the officials thus elected into 
those fields of legislation where class and personal inter- 
ests are arrayed one against the other. 

Political aristocracy being a thing of the past, self- 
interest an inadequate support for political order, and 
over-legislation an evil worse than that which it under- 
takes to cure, I believe that we have but one alternative 
before us if we would preserve our integrity as a nation. 
We must go back to the principle that a just govern- 
ment is based on the consent of the governed. Without 
that consent we have tyranny, even though the govern- 
mg body possesses for the moment a majority at the 



GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION 

polls. Without that consent we can have neither self- 
government nor freedom in its true sense. To maintain 
such freedom we must accept the principle of govern- 
ment by public sentiment. 

This is a phrase which is often used, and almost as 
often ridiculed. The men who are engaged in what they 
call practical politics regai-d moral ideas in this field as 
a matter of slight importance, except in those rare 
national crises when the pubhc is thoroughly roused. 
They say that for every instance of failure of legislation 
without public sentiment behind it you can give at least 
as glaring an instance of failure of public sentiment 
without legislative and administrative machinery to 
support it. They hold, in short, that government by 
moral ideas will not work. 

I believe that this view, though widely held, rests on 
a misconception of what public sentiment really is. 

Whenever a large number of people want a thing we 
hear it said that there is a pubhc sentiment in its favor. 
This is not necessarily true. Even the fact that a 
majority may be willing to vote for a measure does not 
prove that it has this basis. The desire may be simply 
the outcome of widespread personal interest, and may 
not deserve in any sense the name of pubhc sentiment or 
public spirit. Take the whole matter of anti-trust legis- 
lation. Most people object to trusts. Why? Largely 
because they do not own them. If a man really beheves 
that a trust is a bad thing and would refuse to coun- 
tenance its pursuits if he were given a majority interest 
in its stock, he can fairly dignify his spirit of opposition 
to trusts by the title of public sentiment. And it may be 
added that if things are done by trusts or by any other 
forms of economic organization which arouse this sort of 
disinterested opposition, they speedily work their own 

25 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

cure. If a considerable number of influential men see 
the pernicious effects of a business practice sufficiently 
to condemn it in themselves as well as in others, they 
can speedily restrict, if they cannot wholly prevent, its 
continuance. Most of the effective control of combina- 
tions of capital has been in fact brought about by intel- 
ligent public opinion slowly acting in this way. If, 
however, the critic is doing on a small scale what the 
trust is practising on a large scale; if he is making 
every effort to seU his goods for as high prices as pos- 
sible, not being over-scrupulous as to the means by 
which this is brought about ; if he in his own way tries 
to monopolize his market as the ill-managed trusts mo- 
nopohze theirs ; if, in short, he simply complains of the 
practices of the trusts because he is at the wrong end of 
certain important transactions, and becomes their victim 
instead of their beneficiary, then his words count for 
nothing. No matter how many thousands of men there 
may be in his position, their aggregate work is not Hkely 
to reach farther than the passage of a certain amount of 
iU-considered and inoperative legislation. Take another 
instance from similar ground, — that of the silver move- 
ment. Here the matter was more complex. A certain 
amount of agitation in favor of silver was based on a 
real feeling that gold had appreciated, and that this pro- 
duced an unfairness which was repugnant to the moral 
sense of the community. So far as this state of feehng 
existed the agitation had real strength, independent of 
the question whether the facts which gave rise to this 
feeling were rightly or wrongly interpreted. But at least 
an equally large part of the silver movement was based, 
not on the feeling that the exclusive use of gold hurt 
the public, but on the argument that it hurt certain 
individuals. When people were therefore urged to 

.26 



GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION 

vote for a change, not because one kind of money was 
better for the public than another, but because it was 
better for them as individuals to pay their debts in 
cheap money, then the silver agitation became an appeal 
to class interests wliich could command no power except 
that which was represented by the votes of the class in 
question. This does not mean that the appeal to class 
interests was any less marked on the other side ; but it 
means that even if the movement had been successful, 
the resulting laws would probably have been inoperative 
in practice, because imposed by a majority upon the 
transactions of a reluctant minority. It cannot be too 
often repeated that those opinions which a man is pre- 
pared to maintain at another's cost, but not at his own, 
count for little in forming the general sentiment of a 
community, or in producing any effective pubhc move- 
ment. They are manifestations of boastfulness, or envy, 
or selfishness, rather than of that public spirit wliich is 
an essential constituent in all true public opinion. 

There are some moralists who would deny the possibil- 
ity of any such public opinion which should be independ- 
ent of selfishness, and which should rise above personal 
interests. But they have the facts of history against 
them. Aristotle has well said that man is a pohtical 
animal. He has an instinct for forming communities, 
and for acting in concert with the fellow members of 
those communities. Every such political community or 
unit has its code of pohtical ethics. Under the influence 
of this code a man will do things which are quite in- 
dependent of his personal selfishness, and which may 
even militate against the dictates of such selfishness. 
The spirit of patriotism will lead him to risk personal 
suffering and death itself in the service of that commun- 
ity ; it will even lead hun to submit to disciphne and to 

:27 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

restraint which is irksome in the extreme. He will ac- 
quiesce in the results of laws which place burdens upon 
hun for the benefit of others. A community in which 
such patriotism and public devotion were wholly absent 
could no longer remain a people by itself. It would be 
daily threatened by conquest from mthout and by disso- 
lution from within. 

Pubhc sentiment, or pubhc spirit, is the name given 
to the feehng which gives effect to these virtues. It 
represents each man's share in that poUtical conscience 
which is as important for the ordering of the affairs of 
the state as is the personal conscience to the ordering of 
the affairs of the individual. Public opinion is a judg- 
ment formed in accordance with the dictates of this poHt- 
ical conscience, and representing a theory which a man is 
prepared to apply against himself as well as against others. 

Where it exists, such pubhc opinion is not only power- 
ful, but all-powerful. It can accompUsh more than any 
other coercive agency in the world. Take its operation, 
on a small scale, as brought out in the recent hazing 
investigation at West Point. When the pubhc senti- 
ment of the cadet corps is brought into conflict with the 
regulations of the Academy, the unwritten code of honor 
proves the stronger. We may differ as to our opinion 
of its merits ; but of its power there can be no question. 
And the power which is here illustrated on a small scale 
has been repeatedly exemphfied on a large scale in the 
history of public and private morals. What is it that 
has rendered murder a rare exception instead of a fre- 
quent social event? It is not the existence of statutes 
which make murder a crime ; it is the growth of a pubhc 
opinion wliich makes the individual condemn himself 
and his friends, as well as his enemies, for indulgence in 
that propensity. There were laws enough against mur- 

28 



GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION 

der in Italy five hundred years ago ; but these laws were 
practically inoperative, because they had not really formed 
part of the social conscience, as they have to-day. On 
the other hand, the social conscience of mediaeval Italy, 
with aU its laxity in the matter of murder, was strict in 
certain matters of commercial trust, on which it is to-day 
relatively loose. A man actually forfeited self-respect by 
a questionable financial transaction in those days as he 
did not forfeit it by the murder of two or three of his 
best friends. As a consequence, that particular kind of 
financial immorality was much rarer then tlian it is now. 
Such instances can be indefinitely multiphed. What- 
ever may be the dictum of the theoretical moraUst, no 
student of social order will doubt that public sentiment, 
if once aroused, can be made to dominate the action of 
individuals and lead them to do things which from the 
standpoint of selfishness are inconvenient and irrational. 

But can public sentiment be thus aroused to do any 
large portion of the work which we now demand of gov- 
ernment ? Admitting its power in those cases where it 
already exists, can its apphcation be widened at will, so 
as to reach those financial and social wrongs in which 
the pursuit of self-interest has involved us ? This is a 
fair question, which must be fairly answered. 

It may be frankly recognized that public sentiment 
wiU not meet all those evils, or accomplish all those 
objects, for which numbers of people now desire legis- 
lation. This fact, however, can be considered a merit 
rather than a fault. If any agency were found to give 
effect to all the ill-considered demands of our major- 
ities, there would be no more freedom in America than 
there is in China. That it can be made broad enough to 
cover the field where legislation has proved practical and 
salutary is, I tliink, scarcely open to doubt. One or two 

29 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

instances will help to illustrate this. The history of 
Hquor laws shows that the attempt to enforce prohibi- 
tion on all localities indiscriminately, independent of the 
pubhc sentiment which lay behind them, resulted not 
only in defiance of these laws, but in degradation of the 
authority of the state itself ; and that the really effective 
control was accomphshed by measures so framed that 
pubhc action went hand in hand with pubhc opinion. 
The history of railroad legislation in the United States 
furnishes even more marked instances of the same sort. 
It has been a pretty constant record of the success of 
measures which undertook httle, but provided for much 
pubhcity, as compared with measures which undertook 
much, but tended to drive the recusants into the dark. 
If this has been the case hitherto, when the development 
of pubhc opinion has been treated as a mere accident, 
how much more may we expect it to prove true if the 
principle were once brought home to the citizens as a 
body that pubhc sentiment was the important thing on 
wliich to rely, and that they could not afford to devolve 
upon the legislature or the administration a responsibihty 
which must finally come home to themselves. That the 
better class of American citizens would refuse to accept 
this responsibihty when thus squarely brought home to 
them, I do not for one moment believe. In the matter 
of personal morahty they do in fact accept it. In no 
nation is the influence of sympathy for others so power- 
ful; in none are the strong so ready to sacrifice their 
convenience to the comfort of the weak. That these 
methods are not carried out in our business and our poh- 
tics is, I beheve, due to false theories of government, 
accepted by the community as a whole, which lead men 
to rely too much on self-interest and on legislation. If 
our people can accept cheerfully those burdens involved 

30 



GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION 

in the duties of private life, there is no inherent reason 
why they should fail to accept the trusts of pubhc life. 
That they are now inclined to make light of their obliga- 
tions to others in business and in politics, is not due to 
any incapacity for taking heavy obligations seriously ; it 
is due to the fact that they have been taught to regard 
business and politics as games, with no obligations pro- 
founder than the rules, and no authority higher than the 
umpire. It is this inadequate conception of pubUc 
responsibihty, rather than any reluctance to sacrifice 
themselves where a responsibility is recognized, that 
now stands in the way of our progress. 

What rules of conduct pubhc opinion would prescribe 
in order to meet the political and industrial dangers 
under wliich we suffer, it is too early to say. What 
specific obligations the public conscience, Avhen once 
aroused, would regard as binding in matters hke this, 
we have no time to consider at present. It would take 
not one hour, but many, to discuss the uses which could 
be made of such a power, when once fully recognized as 
a working force in political hfe. It is enough for the 
moment to call attention to the fact that this power ex- 
ists ; that it is an instrument fitted to meet the most 
urgent needs of society to-day — strong where strength 
is needed, slow where conservatism is required, capable 
of indefinite expansion without threatening the founda- 
tions of self-government. It lies for the time unused; 
but it awaits only the mind which shall discern its possi- 
bilities and the hand which shall wield it in the public 
interest. To the men who will thus see it and use it it 
offers the opportunity to become leaders in a higher type 
of social order than any which the world has yet seen, — 
an order in which the principle of noblesse oblige is recog- 
nized, not as the exclusive glory of one class, but as a 

31 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

democratic possession which imposes its honorable bur- 
dens upon the whole body of the people. 

The question is often asked what constitutes the essen- 
tial mark of a gentleman, as distinct from the accidents 
of birth and of clothes, of manners and of speech. I 
believe it is to be found in the readiness to accept trusts, 
even when they are personally disadvantageous, — the 
readiness to subordinate a man's own convenience and 
desires to a social code. The code may be a good one or 
a bad one ; but it is an authority which the gentleman 
accepts of his own free will, without waiting for any one 
to compel him to accept it. To the extent that he does 
this, he not only proves himseK a gentleman, but proves 
himself capable of self-government. In this sense I 
beUeve that the great body of the American people 
are gentlemen; and that this is the best guarantee for 
the permanence of our system of self-government amid 
the increasing difficulties with which it has to deal. 
There is much which is as yet defective in our commer- 
cial and pohtical code of honor. But the fundamental 
fault is in the code and not in the man ; and therefore 
the task of the reformer is no insuperable one. 

The thing that makes democracy practicable is a will- 
ingness, on the part of the mass of the people, to submit 
to self-imposed authority without waiting for the poUce- 
man to enforce it. The cause of democracy was, as we 
have seen, the distribution of fighting power, which for- 
merly had been confined to one class. The possibihty 
of maintaining democracy is due to the fact that the 
readiness to accept self-imposed burdens has gone hand 
in hand with the distribution of power. The danger of 
democracy lies in the adoption of a false code of honor, 
i which tolerates and approves the pursuit of self-interest 
in lines where it must prove ultimately destructive to 

32 



GOVERNMENT BY PUBLIC OPINION 

the community. If our men of influence can see these 
dangers in time to submit to self-imposed restrictions, 
they can preserve their freedom from legislative inter- 
ference, and our republic can remain, as it now is, a self- 
governing body. If they do not see it in time, the 
demands for the extension of legislative machinery and 
pohce activity will so far restrict our personal Hberty 
that democratic freedom will exist only in name, and we 
shall have a social order where the form of an occasional 
election is but a decent veil to disguise struggles for the 
tyraimy of one class over another. 

It is for the young men who are coming on the field of 
pohtical hfe to-day to guard against this danger. Our 
college students have Hved in communities which have 
their historic traditions and their collective aspirations ; 
each of which is in a true sense a body politic, with its 
public spirit and its public sentiment. It is for them to 
carry into the larger world of business and of legislation 
the spirit which will subordinate personal convenience to 
collective honor. Let them cease to appeal exclusively to 
self-interest, either in their own judgment or in the judg- 
ment of others. For a political leader who has not only 
fixed standards of right, but a behef in the capacity of 
the people to accept those standards, the times are al- 
ways ready. Calhoun and Clay and Webster and Lin- 
coln differed in their judgments and in their conclusions. 
But it was characteristic of them all that they made 
their final appeal, not to the narrow interests of any 
class, but to what they beheved to be broad principles 
of public opinion and public morality. It was in the 
spirit of these men that our republic gained its growth 
during the century that is past ; it is for us, their sons, 
to see that the same spirit is applied to the yet larger 
problems of the century which is to come. 
3 33 



THE FORMATION AND CONTROL 
OF TRUSTS 

In the year 1898 the new companies formed in the 
United States for purposes of industrial consolidation 
had an aggregate capital of over nine hundred million 
doUars. When this fact first transpired, it was regarded 
as surprising. Now it has become commonplace. For in 
the earlier half of 1899, according to the careful estimate 
of the Financial Chronicle, the capital of the new com- 
panies of this character was three thousand one hundred 
milHon dollars, or more than three times that of the 
whole year preceding.^ 

It is hard at once to appreciate the magnitude of these 
figures. No single event of a similar character, either 
in the American or in the English market, has involved 
such large and sudden transmutations of capital. It 
cannot be paralleled in the annals of railroad investment. 
Even in the year 1887, so conspicuous in our raih'oad 
history, the capital used in building thirteen thousand 
miles of new line can hardly have reached seven hundred 
million dollars. In the whole period of rapid expansion 
from 1879 to 1882, the volume of new railroad securities 
issued did not equal the industrial issues of this single 
half year alone. Under such circumstances the mat- 
ter of industrial consolidation becomes one of pressing 

1 $1,981,000,000 common stock, $1,041,000,000 preferred stock, and 
$120,000,000 bonds. 



FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS 

importance. Is this a transient movement, or is it a 
manifestation of permanent tendencies ? How far is it 
likely to go? To what limits, commercial or legal, is 
it subject? How are its evils to be avoided? Is it, 
as the socialists claun, a stepping-stone toward a new 
organization of industry under government authority? 
These are the questions which must be asked and 
answered. 

It is safe to say at the outset that this movement is 
not Ukely to continue long at the rate which it is now 
maintaining. While some of the industrial issues repre- 
sent an investment of new capital, a much larger number 
represent a conversion of old capital. To such con- 
version there is, of course, a natural limit, when all, or 
nearly all, the older enterprises in an industry have 
become consohdated. Of the three thousand million 
dollars of securities placed on the market in the first 
half of the year 1899, it is doubtful whether one 
thousand million, or even five hundred million, really 
represent new capital put into the various lines of busi- 
ness enterprise. Measured in dollars and cents, the 
industrial growth is a comparatively small element in 
this movement, and the financial change of form a much 
larger one. We may, I think, go a step farther, and say 
that in no small part of these enterprises the financial 
motive of rendering the securities marketable is at 
present more prominent than the industrial motive of 
rendering the operations of the consolidated company 
more efficient. 

Let us see what is the difference between these two 
kinds of motives, and how they operate at the present 
juncture. 

A man who invests his money in a business has two 
distinct objects. He wishes to secure as large an income 

35 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

as possible; this is his industrial motive. He also 
wishes to be able to get his money back whenever 
he needs it, and if possible to get back more than he 
put in ; this is his financial motive. The business must 
be profitable; the security must be marketable. To a 
certain extent these two things go hand in hand. An 
investment which has paid large and fairly regular divi- 
dends for a series of years becomes known in the local 
security market, and can be transferred to other hands 
at comparatively slight sacrifice in case the owner desires 
to sell it. But this is only true up to a certain point. 
Some of the things which make an industry profitable to 
the individual owner tend to make its securities less 
marketable instead of more so. A local business which 
a man has mider his own eye, and whose details he 
knows by experience, may be a very sure investment for 
him, and a relatively unsafe one for others; good to 
hold, but bad to sell. The intimate personal knowledge 
which is his protection becomes a possible menace to 
other holders. The majority of investors throughout 
the country cannot safely have anything to do with it. 
In such an industry the market value of the stock when 
it is sold is apt to be less than proportionate to its 
income-producing power. 

A great many of the manufacturing industries of the 
country have remained in this localised condition. If we 
compare the past history of industrial investments and 
of railroad investments, we are struck with the relative 
narrowness of the market for the former. The securities 
of a good railroad could find purchasers anywhere. If 
the price paid for the stock was low in proportion to the 
return, it was only because people distrusted its future 
earning capacity. Even a small railroad might have a 
national reputation as an investment. The demand for 

S6 



FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS 

the securities of Iowa railroads was not in any sense 
confined to one State or one section. As much as ninety- 
seven per cent came from districts remote from Iowa. 
But the demand for the securities of an Iowa factory 
was for the most part local. Its operations were not 
performed under the public eye. Its stocks could there- 
fore safely be held only by those who had private advan- 
tages for getting an inside view. 

But when an industry throughout the country was 
consolidated, this condition rapidly changed. A very 
much larger public was ready to buy securities of the 
American Sugar Refineries Company or the American 
Tobacco Company than would have cared to invest in 
any of the individual concerns of wliich they were com- 
posed. The national extent of the organization gave the 
holder of its shares larger and steadier opportunities 
of converting his investment into cash than he could 
have had when his factory remained separate from the 
others ; and it often, though not always, enabled him to 
reahze a much higher price than he otherwise would 
have obtained. While tliis was not always a dominant 
purpose in the formation of these earlier " trusts," it was 
an incidental advantage by which their organizers were 
quick to profit. Besides the motive of economy in oper- 
ation, which was first urged as the reason for enter- 
ing these combinations, the motive of selling securities 
easily and at a high price soon took its place as one of 
co-ordinate importance. 

Apart from this legitimate increase in the value of 
trust securities, due to the national extent of industry 
which enables them to find a market among a larger 
circle of investors, there is an illegitimate increase due 
to the opportunities which they afford for manipulation 
by inside rings. There is a fashion in investments as in 

37 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

everything else. A large section of the pubhc bnys the 
kind of thing that others are bu3dng. Sometimes it has 
been land ; sometimes it has been railroads ; just now it 
is industrials. In a year of prosperity, with a shght 
tendency toward inflation, prices of all kinds of securi- 
ties tend to rise. The man who has bought to be in 
fashion is pleased with the increase in the nominal value 
of his investment and buys more. Those who are con- 
nected with the management see an opportunity of dis- 
posing of some or all of their holdings to great advantage. 
Before the inevitable crash comes they have converted 
most of their capital into money ; and the outside buyer 
is a loser. Prior to the crisis of 1873 the favorite chance 
for these operations was found in railroad enterprise; 
but railroad traffic and railroad accounts are now so 
much supervised that the possibiHty of such transactions 
in this field is less than it was thirty years ago. And, 
what is of still more importance, a series of hard expe- 
riences has made the investing public quite shy of 
dishonest railroads. In manipulating the stocks of 
"industrials," the speculator finds these obstacles less 
serious. The authorities have not learned to exercise 
adequate supervision ; the pubUc has not accustomed 
itself to use caution. 

The buying of industrial securities simply because it 
is the fashion to do so is bound to come to an end. The 
speculation now so actively indulged m must reach its 
own limit in process of time. When the investors as a 
body discover that the system of first and second prefer- 
ences is a fatally easy means of putting an individual 
security-holder at the mercy of a dishonest board of 
directors, we shall probably witness an apparent stop- 
page in the rapid process of industrial consohdation. In 
fact, there may be a reaction, and a reconversion of the 

38 



FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS 

united companies into separate ones, if, as has happened 
in other cases, the unreasoning fondness of the public 
for a particular form of investment is followed by an 
equally unreasoning aversion of all enterprises of this 
form, legitimate as well as illegitimate. Such a reaction 
has taken place more than once in the economic history 
of the nineteenth centuiy. Over-speculation in English 
railroads in 1844, in American railroads in 1873, in prod- 
uce warrants in 1881, in car trusts in 1886, not to men- 
tion a score of other less important instances, produced 
in the years inmiediately following an almost absolute 
stoppage of the issue of what had seemed previously a 
very promising and important form of investment or 
speculation. 

We are safe in concluding that the rate of formation 
of large industrial companies will be less rapid in the 
future than it has been in the past. Consohdations 
which have been formed for selling securities by deceiv- 
ing investors will cease. But there will always remain 
a considerable number which are formed for industrial 
rather than financial pui-poses ; and these will probably 
be more important twenty years hence than they are 
to-day. As the world moves on, the relative economy 
of large concerns makes itself more clearly knowoi. The 
steady movement in this direction is not confined to the 
United States. It is just as strongly felt in England ; it 
is, if possible, even more strongly felt in Germany. If 
less is said about these industrial consolidations in Europe 
than in America, it is because they have proceeded more 
quietly and along more legitimate lines, not because they 
are fewer or less important. They have not advertised 
themselves so extensively, because they were not trying 
to sell their securities. This has prevented the public 
from knowing so much about them. It has kept them 

39 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

in some measure out of the market. But so far from 
interfering with their prominence in the actual operation 
of manufacture, it has rather contributed to increase it. 

The nature of the economy which is reahzed by these 
combinations has been set forth by so many writers that 
we can pass over this phase of the subject very quickly. 
Their advantage is twofold. In the first place, the con- 
sohdation of all competing concerns avoids many un- 
necessary expenses of distribution. Under the old system 
these expenses are very great. The multiphcation of 
selHng agencies involves much waste. Competitive ad- 
vertisement is often an unnecessary and unprofitable use 
of money. Delivery of goods from independent produ- 
cers, whether by wagon or by railroad, often costs more 
than the better-organized shipments of a large single con- 
cern. All of these evils can be avoided by consohdation. 
In the second place, a consolidated company has advan- 
tages in its power of adapting the amount of production 
to the needs of consumption. Where several concerns 
with large plants are competing and no one knows ex- 
actly what the others are doing, we are apt to have an 
alternation between years of over-production and years 
of scarcity, — an alternation no less unfortunate for the 
pubhc than for the parties immediately concerned. A 
wisely managed combination can do much to avoid this. 
By making its production more even it can give a con- 
stant supply of goods to the consumers and a constant 
opportunity of work to the laborers ; and the resulting 
steadiness of prices is so great an advantage to all con- 
cerned that the public can well afford to pay a very con- 
siderable profit to those whose organizing power has 
rendered such useful service. 

This is the picture of the workings of industrial con- 
solidation which is drawn by its most zealous defenders. 

40 



FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS 

It is needless to say that it represents possible rather 
than actual achievement ; that where one company has 
secured these results, five, or perhaps ten, have failed to 
secure them ; that for one combination which has earned 
large profits by public service, many have tried to earn 
large profits by public disservice, and have frequently 
ended in loss to themselves and to the pubhc ahke. 

But as long as it is possible for a well-managed con- 
solidation to do better work for all parties than could 
have been done under free competition, so long we may 
expect to see the movement in this direction continue. 
Where there is a real economy to be achieved, investors 
will try to take advantage of the opportunity. The 
attempt to prohibit them from so doing is likely to 
prove futile. There is no better evidence of the strength 
of the tendency toward consolidation than is furnished 
by the multitude of unenforced laws and decisions in- 
tended to prevent it. When railroads were first intro- 
duced, people's minds revolted against the monopoly of 
transportation thereby involved. Statutes were devised 
to make the track free for the use of different carriers, 
as the pubhc liighway is free to the owners of different 
wagons. But the economy of having all the trains con- 
trolled by a single owner was so gi-eat that people were 
forced to abandon their preconceived notion of public 
right to the track. They still, however, tried to insist 
that the owners of separate raikoads should compete 
with one another, and passed various laws to forbid the 
formation of pools and traffic associations. Some of 
these attempts have been failures from the outset; 
others have simply hastened the process of consohdation 
of the competing interests which put them beyond the 
reach of the special law ; the few which have been ef- 
fective have done a great deal of harm and almost no 

41 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

good. The majority of thinking men have come to the 
conclusion that raiboads are in some sense a natural 
monopoly, and have classed them with water-works, gas- 
works, and other " quasi-pubhc " lines of business, as 
an exception to the general rule of free competition. 
But we are now beginning to find that the same possibil- 
ities of economy which first showed themselves in these 
distributive enterprises may be reahzed also in produc- 
tive industry. They are felt to a considerable degree in 
all kinds of enterprise involving large plant ; and there 
is every reason to beheve that the tendency toward com- 
bination will be as inevitable in manufacturing as in 
transportation. In the one case as in the other, we may 
expect that laws against pools will contribute to the 
formation of trusts, that laws against trusts will lead to 
actual consohdation. 

On the other hand, we need not expect this process to 
be a sudden one. There are practical limits to the 
economy of consohdation, which are more effective than 
the legal ones. The difficulty of finding men to manage 
the largest of these enterprises constitutes the greatest 
bar to their success. Just as in an army there are many 
who can fill the position of captain, few who can fill 
that of colonel, and almost none who are competent to 
be generals in command — so in industrial enterprise 
there are many men who can manage a thousand dollars, 
few who can manage a milhon, and next to none who 
can manage fifty million. The mere work of centrahzed 
administration puts a tax upon the brains of men who 
are accustomed to a smaller range of duties, which very 
few find themselves able to bear. 

Nor is this all. The existence of a monopoly gives 
its managers a wider range of questions to decide than 
came before any of them under the old system of free 

42 



FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS 

competition. Where several concerns are producing the 
same line of goods the price which any of them can 
charge is largely fixed by its competitors. It is com- 
pelled to sell at market prices. The manager concen- 
trates his attention on economy of production, so as to 
be able to make a profit at those prices while his rival is 
perhaps making a loss. But when all of these concerns 
are consolidated under a single hand, the power of con- 
trolhng the prices of the product is vastly greater. The 
manager no longer asks at what rate others are selling ; 
he asks what the market will bear. To answer this 
question intelhgently he must consider the future de- 
velopment of the industiy as well as the present. The 
discretionary power wliich tlie absence of competition 
places in his hands constitutes a temptation to put prices 
up to a point injurious to the public and ruinous to the 
permanence of the consoHdated company. Our past 
experience with industrial consoUdations proves that 
very few men are capable of resisting this temptation or 
of exercising the mder power over business which the 
modern system places in their hands. 

The name " trust," which is popularly applied to all 
these large aggregations of capital, was somewhat acci- 
dental in its origin. It has, however, an appropriateness 
which few persons reaUze. The managers of every con- 
soUdated enterprise, whether based on a contract, a trust 
agreement, or an actual consolidation, are exercising pow- 
ers to benefit or injure the public which are analogous 
to those of a trustee. It has been said that all property 
is, in its wider sense, a trust in behalf of the consmner. 
But where competition is active, the power of using wrong 
business methods and unfair prices is so far limited that 
the chance for abuse of this trust is greatly lessened. It 
is only in the case of large combinations, with their dis- 

48 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

cretionary power for good or evil, that the character of 
the trust reposed by society in the directors of its busi- 
ness enterprise makes itself really and truly felt. With 
these trusts, as with every other trust that deserves the 
name, it is hard to provide legislative machinery which 
will absolutely secure its fulfilment. The abihty to 
handle any trust is the result of a long process of legal 
and moral education. We cannot make a law which 
shall allow the right exercise of a discretionary power 
and prohibit its wrong exercise. But it is possible to 
modify the existing law in a great many directions, 
which Avill hasten instead of retarding the educational 
process. Thus far most of our statutory regulations 
have been in the wrong direction. We have attempted to 
prohibit the inevitable, and have simply favored the use 
of underhanded and short-sighted methods of doing 
things which must be done openly if they are to be done 
well. 

To make matters move in the right direction, at least 
three points must be kept in view. 

1. Increased responsibility on the part of hoards of 
directors. 

Where the members of a board are working for their 
own individual purposes, ignoring or even antagonizing 
the permanent interests of the investors, all the evils of 
industrial combination are likely to be seen at their 
worst, and the possibility of improvement is reduced to 
a minimum. 

In the first place, the mere fact that the directors are 
allowed to ignore their narrower and clearer duties to 
the investors prevents them from recognizing the very 
existence of their wider duties to the public. They 
think of business as a game, which they play under cer- 
tain well-defined rules. They sacrifice those whom they 

44 



FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS 

represent in order to win the game for themselves. 
This wrong underlying idea prevents them from rightly 
conceiving of any trust which they may handle. 

In the next place, the temporary interests which the 
directors pursue in endeavoring to manipulate the mar- 
ket are not Ukely to coincide with the interests of the 
outside pubhc, whether laborers or consumers. The 
interests of the speculator may be furthered by these 
very fluctuations in price which it is the ostensible 
object of the consohdation to avoid. If a business like 
that of the Standard Oil Company is run with a view 
to the permanent interests of the public, it will generally 
be found that prices are made relatively low and steady, 
and that laborers are given constant employment; but 
in some other cases, where the property has been subject 
to manipulation, the results have been just the reverse. 

Finally — and this is perhaps the most important 
point of all — if the directors are allowed to make their 
money independently of the interests of the investor and 
the consumer, the education in poUtical economy which 
should result from business success or failure is done 
away with. If a man is managing a business with a 
full sense of responsibihty to those who put money into 
the enterprise, a failure to serve the public means, in the 
long run, a failure of his own purposes and ambitions. 
If this failure is but partial, he will learn to do better 
next time ; if it is complete, he will give place to some 
one else. But if he has taken up the industry as a 
temporary speculation, buying the securities at prices 
depressed by untrue reports, holding for an increase of 
value, and selHng them on false pretences to deluded 
investors, no lesson is learned by the management of the 
enterprise ; and the same mistakes may be repeated in- 
definitely under successive boards of directors. Greater 

45 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

strictness with regard to the formation of new compa- 
nies, increased publicity of accounts, clear recognition, 
legal and moral, of the responsibility of directors who 
have made false reports to the stockholders, — these are 
conditions precedent to any radical and thorough reform 
of existing abuses.^ 

2. A change in the legal character of the labor contract. 

Here we stand on more doubtful ground. It is easy 
to say that the present relations between large corpora- 
tions and their employees are unsatisfactory. It is 
difficult to say just what should be done to make them 
better. As matters stand at present, a strike begun on 
trivial grounds may be allowed to interrupt the whole 
business of a community. The natural alternative 
would seem to be compulsory arbitration; but this in 
practice has not worked nearly as well as could be 
desired. It is probable that in this respect changes in 
the laws must come slowly. An obligation of a consoU- 
dated company to perform continuous service must be 
coupled with a clearer definition of the obligations of 
the workman in this respect. Whatever can or cannot 
be done by legal enactment, society must at any rate 

1 Tlio roal objectiou to stock watering — about which so much is said 
and so little uiulcrstood — lies along these lines. The old-fashioned criti- 
cism of watered stock was based on tlie supposition that the public was 
compelled by the practice to pay higher rates thau would otherwise 
have been charged. There may be a very few instances of this kind ; but 
the idea that such water has any considerable general effect on rates has 
been pretty thoroughly disproved. The rates are arranged to make max- 
imum net returns above expenses, whether the nominal capital be large or 
small. The evil which really results, all but universally, from stock water- 
ing is habitual falsification of accounts. If the directors so arrange their 
hooks as to make it appear that money has been invested which actually 
has never j^assed through their hands, they are under a great temptatipu 
to make false reports concerning other parts of the business, and to with- 
hold from investors and consumers alike that sort of iuformatiou which 
the public has a right to require. 

46 



FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS 

recognize that those whom it has placed in charge of 
large industrial enterprises are not simply handling 
their own money or other people's money, but are above 
all things leaders of men ; and it must judge the finan- 
cier who has through his neghgence allowed the busi- 
ness of the community to be interrupted by strikes, as it 
would judge the general who, in his anxiety to secure 
the emoluments of his office, had allowed his country to 
be invaded and liis amiies paralyzed. 

3. An increased care in the imposition of high import 
duties. 

In the past we have allowed the manufacturers in 
each line of industr}'' a great deal of freedom to suggest 
what the tariff on the products of their foreign competi- 
tors should be, knowing that if it was placed too high 
the internal competition of new enterprises would re- 
duce profits and prices to a not exorbitant level. Of 
course mistakes have been made in this matter which 
have caused serious and unnecessary variations in price ; 
but as a rule domestic competition has set moderate 
limits to the arbitrary results of tariff-making. When, 
however, domestic competition is done away Avdth, the 
danger is more serious and permanent. It is hardly 
possible to deal very directly with the tariff question 
without going beyond the limits of a chapter like this ; 
but it is safe to say that in those industries which are at 
all thoroughly monopolized public safety will generally 
demand that duties be placed on a revenue rather than 
a protective basis. The fact that an industry can thus 
organize itself shows that it has outgrown the period 
of infancy. If it continues to demand a prohibitory 
tariff on its products, the presumption is that it is 
trying to make an arbitrary profit at the expense of 
the consumer. 

47 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

Such are the general directions in which private cor- 
porations must expect increased restriction, as they 
become more or less complete monopolies. But there is 
a still deeper question which many are asking, and to 
which not a few are giving a radical answer. Will such 
monopolies be long allowed to remain in the hands of 
private corporations at all ? Is it not rather true that 
this consolidation is a step in the direction of state 
ownership of industrial enterprise? Is not a grave 
crisis at hand in which there will be a decisive struggle 
between the forces of individualism and socialism, of 
property and of numbers ? 

It is quite within the limits of possibihty that many 
of these enterprises will pass into government owner- 
ship in the immediate future ; but it is highly improb- 
able that this tendency toward consolidation is increasing 
the dangers of a conflict between individualists and 
socialists. Its net effect is to diminish these dangers by 
making the question of state ownership relatively unim- 
portant to the public as a whole. This may seem hke a 
surprising statement, but there are a great many facts 
to justify it. There has been of late years, in connec- 
tion with these movements toward consohdation, an 
approximation in character between private and public 
business. Formerly the two were sharply distinguished ; 
to-day their methods are much closer to each other. 
Private business can do httle more than pay interest on 
the capital involved, because of the increased intensity 
of modern competition. Public business can do no less 
than pay interest on the capital involved, because of the 
growing vigilance of the taxpayers; for the taxpayers 
will not tolerate a deficit which increases their burdens. 
But obviously the position of the consumer toward a 
private business which pays less than four per cent is 

48 



FORMATION AND CONTROL OF TRUSTS 

not likely to be very different from his position toward 
a public business which must pay more than three. 
The distinction from the financial standpoint is thus 
reduced to a minimum; nor is it much greater, if we 
look at the matter from the operating standpoint. The 
officers of a large private corporation have almost ceased 
to come into direct contact with the stockliolders ; and 
to a nearly equal degree our public administrative offi- 
cials who actually do the work have ceased to come into 
contact mth the voters. The private officer no longer 
seeks simply to please the individual group of investors ; 
the pubhc official no longer strives simply to please the 
individual group of politicians. The man who does so 
is in either case charged, and rightly charged, with mis- 
understanding the duties of his office. The more com- 
pletely the principles of civil service reform are carried 
out, the closer does the similarity become. The re- 
sponsibility of public and private officials aUke leads 
them to the exercise of technical skill and sound general 
principles of business policy, rather than to the help of 
influential private interests. Under these circumstances, 
the character of good pubhc business and good private 
business becomes so nearly alike that it makes compara- 
tively little difference to most of us whether an enter- 
prise is conducted by our voters or by our financiers. 
The one question to ask is, which method produces in 
any case the fewer specific abuses. We may look with 
confidence to the time when the question of state owner- 
ship of industrial enterprises will cease to be a broad 
popular issue, and become a business question, which 
economic considerations may perhaps lead society to 
decide in favor of public control at one point and 
private control at some closely related point. There 
will, of course, always be a conflict between those who 
* 49 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

have more money than votes, who will desire to extend 
the sphere of commercial activity, and those who have 
more votes than money, who will desire to extend the 
sphere of political activity ; but to the great majority of 
people, who have one vote and just money enough to 
support their families, it is not probable that this 
conflict will ever create a general issue of the first 
importance. 

We may sum up our general conclusions as follows : 
So far as the present tendency toward industrial consoH- 
dation is a financial movement for the sake of selling 
securities, it is Ukely to be short-lived. So far as it is 
an industrial movement to secure economy of operation 
and commercial poUcy, it is likely to be permanent. 
Attempts to stop this tendency by law will probably be 
as futile in the field of manufacture as they have been 
in that of transportation. The growth of these enter- 
prises creates a trust in a sense which is not generally 
appreciated; it gives their managers a discretionary- 
power to injure the public as well as to help it. The 
wise exercise of this trust cannot be directly provided 
for by legal enactment; it must be the result of an 
educational process wliich can be furthered by widened 
conceptions of directors' responsibility. As this process 
of consolidation and of education goes on, private and 
public business tend to approach one another in charac- 
ter. The question of state ownership of industrial 
enterprises, instead of becoming an acute national issue, 
as so many now expect, will tend rather to become 
relatively unimportant, and may not improbably be 
removed altogether from the field of party politics. 



^0 



SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 

There is a set of current conceptions as to the rela- 
tions between political economy, socialism, and legisla- 
tive refonn which have been fostered by writers like 
Carlyle or Ruskin, Kingsley or Maurice, which are 
reflected in many of the most popular novels and 
sermons of the day, and to which some economists of 
reputation have more or less inadvertently lent the 
weight of their autliority. These conceptions may be 
formulated as follows : — 

1. Political Economy makes the individual an end, 
in and for himself; in other words, it is a gospel of 
Mammon and a glorification of selfishness. 

2. Socialism substitutes collective aims for individual 
ones. It is the result of a moral reaction against the 
traditional political economy, — a reaction which is tak- 
ing hold of the masses, and which they are inclined to 
carry to an extreme. 

3. The only way to prevent matters from being car- 
ried to such an extreme is for the wealthy and intelli- 
gent classes to adopt a great many socialistic measures 
on their o^vn account, before the control of our social 
machinery is taken out of their hands. 

The first of these conceptions is an entire mistake. 
Political Economy does not regard the individual as an 
end in himself. It does not glorify the pursuit of wealth 
except so far as tliis pursuit serves the interests of 

51 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

society as a whole. The great work of Adam Smith 
was an inquiry into the causes of the wealth of nations; 
and subsequent economists have followed in his foot- 
steps. They have shown that the collective prosperity 
of a people is far better fostered by the individual 
freedom and enlightened self-interest of its members 
than by any comphcated system of pohce government. 
They have shown that, in the industry of modern civi- 
hzed nations, the man who serves himself intelligently 
is generally serving others, even when he has no inten- 
tion or consciousness of so doing. But in all this the 
individual freedom is treated as a means to social wel- 
fare rather than as an end in itself. 

This development of individualism in economics is 
part of the general trend of modern thought and modern 
Ufe. A few centuries ago, the principle of individual 
freedom was not recognized in law or in morals, any 
more than in trade. It was then thought that liberty 
in trade meant avarice, that hberty in politics meant 
violence, and that liberty in morals meant blasphemous 
wickedness. But as time went on, the modern world 
began to see that this old view was a mistake. Human 
nature was better than had been thought. Man was 
not in a state of Avar with his Creator and all his fellow- 
men which it required the combined power of the 
church and the police to repress. When a community 
had achieved political freedom its members on the 
whole used that freedom to help one another instead 
of to hurt one another. When it had achieved moral 
freedom, it substituted an enlightened and progressive 
morahty for an antiquated and formal one. When it 
had achieved industrial freedom, it substituted high 
efficiency of labor for low efficiency, and large schemes 
of mutual service for small ones. Constitutional liberty 

52 



SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 

in politics, rational altruism in morals, and modern busi- 
ness methods in production and distribution of wealth, 
have been the outcome of the great individualistic 
movement of the nineteenth century. 

The Bishop of Durham's statement that " individu- 
alism regards humanity as made up of disconnected or 
warring atoms " is not merely untrue ; it is exactly the 
reverse of the truth. This idea of disconnected and 
warring atoms represents the traditional standpoint 
instead of the modern individualistic one. The indi- 
vidualist holds that, as society develops, the interests 
of its members become more and more harmonious; 
in other words, that rational egoism and rational altru- 
ism tend to comcide. In fact his chief danger lies in 
exaggerating the completeness of this coincidence in 
the existing imperfect stage of human development, and 
in believing that freedom will do everything for society, 
economically and morally. 

These mistakes and exaggerations of individualism 
have given a legitimate field for socialistic criticism, 
both in morals and in economics. Some of the ablest 
economists on both sides of the Atlantic have done 
admirable work m pointing out where the evils arising 
from individual freedom may exceed its advantages, and 
when society must use its collective authority to pro- 
duce the best economic and moral results. Such has 
been the work of John Stuart Mill, of Stanley Jevons, 
of Sir Thomas Farrer, of President Andrews, and of the 
leaders of the German "Historical School." Men of 
this type recognize that the point of issue between them 
and their opponents is not a question of ends, but of 
means. Both sides have the same object at heart ; 
namely, the general good of society. One side believes 
that this good is best achieved by individual freedom 

53 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

in a particular line of action; the other side believes 
that the dangers and evils with which such freedom 
is attended outweigh its advantages. The good and 
evil are often so closely balanced that economists on 
either side find the utmost advantage in studyiag the 
criticisms of their opponents as a means of avoiding 
or correcting their own errors. 

But the name " socialist " is rarely applied to a critic 
of this stamp. It belongs by current usage to a far 
larger body of people who dislike, misunderstand, and 
try to ignore the results of economic experience. They 
are, as a rule, men who see clearly the existence of cer- 
tain evils in modern industrial society which some econ- 
omists have overlooked, and others have deplored as 
inevitable. They rush to the conclusion that economic 
science regards these evils with indifference, and that its 
conclusions and purposes are therefore immoral; while 
they claim for themselves, more or less consciously, a 
superior moral purpose because they are trying to right 
visible wrongs by direct state activity. This is no 
unfair account of a reaction against the teachings of 
economics, wliich is now widespread and which is 
thought by its exponents to be animated by a high moral 
purpose. 

In actual fact, the reaction is not so much a moral as 
an emotional one. It is not an indication that the social- 
ist hates moral evils which the economist of the old 
school regards with apathy. It is rather the result of a 
difference in mental constitution which leads the econo- 
mist to calculate the large and remote consequences of 
any measure and ignore the immediate details, while the 
socialist feels the details so strongly that he refuses to 
work out the indirect consequences of liis action. It is 
an old saying that men may be divided into two, classes, 

54 



SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 

one of which is so occupied looking at the woods that it 
does not see the trees, while the other is so occupied 
with the trees that it does not see the woods. The atti- 
tude of some of the economists toward questions of 
social reform is not inaptly typified by the former class ; 
that of their sociahstic critics by the latter. 

Of course it will not do to undervalue the emotional 
element in dealing with economic matters, as men of the 
more purely intellectual type are sometimes prone to do. 
Reasoning about human conduct is full of chances of 
error ; and if the outcome of such reasoning is to leave a 
considerable number of human beings in hopeless misery, 
society is justified in demanding that every premise and 
every inference in the chain of reasoning be tested, and 
every rational experiment be made to see whether such a 
consequence is really inevitable. Instances have not 
been wanting when the conclusions of the economists 
have proved wrong, and the emotions of the critics have 
been warranted by the event. The factory legislation of 
England furnishes an historic example. The economists, 
as a rule, condemned this legislation as wrong in prin- 
ciple and likely to do harm ; but the results showed that 
these economists had overlooked certain factors of uu- 
portance with regard to public health and public morals 
which vitiated their conclusions and justified public 
opinion in disregarding them. 

But while the men of emotion may sometimes be right 
and the men of reason wrong, the chances in matters of 
legislation are most decidedly the other way. It is safe 
to say that the harm wliich has been done by laws based 
on unemotional reasoning is but a drop in the bucket 
compared with that which has been done by laws based 
on unreasoning emotion. The tendency to overvalue 
feeling as compared with reason is a far greater danger 

65 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

than the tendency to undervalue it. Legislation is essen- 
tially a matter of remote consequences. The man who 
tries to reason out these consequences will occasionally 
make mistakes ; the man who refuses to reason them 
out will habitually do so. The good which state inter- 
ference does is often something visible and tangible. 
The evil which it does is much more indirect, and can 
only be appreciated by careful study. The man who has 
his mind so fixed on some immediate object as to shut 
his eyes to the results of such study, is almost certain to 
advocate too much state action. He may succeed in 
passing a few good laws, but he will be responsible for a 
vastly larger number of bad ones. 

The danger from this source is increased by the fact 
that so many good people make very little distinction 
between what is emotional and what is moral. They 
think that calculated conduct is selfish conduct, and that 
unselfishness can exist only in the emotional as opposed 
to the intellectual sphere. Many a man gives charity to 
a pauper upon impulse and thinks he is doing a good 
deed, when he is really shutting his eyes to the conse- 
quences of an evil one. " Virtue," says a French writer, 
" is more dangerous than vice because its excesses are 
not subject to the restraints of conscience." There is a 
great deal of legislation, and a great deal of socialism, to 
which this remark will apply. Its promoters believe 
themselves to be actuated by moral ideas, when the 
chief ground for this belief is the absence of intellectual 
ones. 

Perhaps the most plausible argument urged in favor of 
the superior morality of the socialistic system is that it 
would teach people to think more than they now do of 
sympathy as an industrial force, and less of self-interest. 
It is urged that a belief in the principles of the commer- 

56 



SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 

cial world tends to make people selfish, while a belief in 
socialism tends to make them sympathetic. This view 
is hardly justified by the facts of history. In Europe, 
all through the Middle Ages, charity was regai-ded as a 
right and business as a wrong ; but those ages were 
marked by strife rather than by sympathy. The attempt 
to restrict business transactions and to suppress self- 
interest as a commercial factor stood in the way of 
mutual service. The assertion of the duty of charity 
did not produce a better system of social relations, as 
some of its advocates would have us beUeve. It put 
intolerable burdens upon some classes — especially the 
agricultural laborers — in order to support other classes 
in comparative idleness. Though the ideals of sociahsm 
may be attractive, its methods have been demorahzing; 
and this is the really miportant thing to consider in 
judging the moral character of socialism as an economic 
system. 

Let us compare the moral effect of the commercial and 
the sociaHstic theories of value. The commercial theory 
is that the value or proper price of an article is based on 
the needs of the market; that is, upon the utility of 
additional supplies of that article to the consumers. 
The sociahsts object that the results of this theory are 
unjust, and that some people get a large price for what 
has cost them very little effort ; while others expend a 
great deal of effort and can command only a small price 
in return. They would have us adopt a theory of value 
which should make the price depend on the sacrifice of 
the producer rather than on the needs of the consumer. 
At first sight the socialistic theory seems the more just ; 
and the emotional man is pretty certain to pronounce it 
morally superior to the commercial theory. But the in- 
tellectual man, who traces the consequences of the two 

57 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

views, finds that the commercial theory leads men to 
produce what others want in as large quantities as possi- 
ble, and with the minimum expenditure of labor ; while 
the socialistic theory leads men to spend as many hours 
as possible over their work and dole out the smallest 
possible quantities of what other people want. What- 
ever may be thought of the assumptions of the two sys- 
tems, the industrial results of the commercial theory are 
efficiency, progress, and service to others; while those 
of the sociahstic theory are inefficiency, antiquated 
methods of work, and restriction of service rendered. 

Judged in the hght of economic history, the "high 
ideals " which, to quote the words of a somewhat over- 
sympathetic observer, " socialism has placed before the 
masses of the people, and which they have absorbed," 
are based partly on erroneous assumptions and partly 
on demoralizing ones. 

But there is stiU another point to be considered. Even 
if we regard the socialistic views as erroneous and de- 
moralizing, the fact remains that they are held to a 
greater or less extent by a large number of people — 
perhaps a majority of the voters in the United States. 
What is a wise man to do under these circumstances? 
ShaU he make concessions to this sentiment lest a worse 
thing befall him? Some economists of high standing 
expHcitly urge that this should be done. From this 
view the writer is compelled to dissent emphatically, 
alike on grounds of moraUty and of pohcy. He believes 
that the courageous answer to this question is the pru- 
dent one, and that that answer is. No. 

Let us not be misunderstood. If, on careful inquiry, 
it appears to a thinking man that the pubHc good will 
in any particular case be better served by the adoption 
of sociahstic means rather than of individualistic ones, 

58 



SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 

lie ought to favor their adoption, whether this policy 
commands five votes or five million. But if he does not 
beUeve that the public good \vill be served by such a 
policy, and nevertheless lends his countenance to its 
adoption because he is afraid to oppose the emotional 
demand which stands behind it, his conduct is a mis- 
take from whatsoever point of view we regard it. 

In the first place, it is likely to strengthen rather than 
weaken the demand for more radical changes. You can- 
not compromise \\'ith an emotion as you can with a dif- 
fering opinion, — witness the difficulties of arbitration 
in labor disputes. An emotion is stimulated rather than 
satisfied by concessions. Such concessions are taken as 
evidence, not of a spirit of accommodation, but of weak- 
ness, — and, on the whole, rightly so. If the conserva- 
tives yield to a popular clamor which overawes but does 
not convince them, the people are justified in assuming 
that their previous toleration of evils was due to indif- 
ference and not to an honest conviction that it was im- 
possible to stop them by state action. In sacrificing 
their own better judgment, tlie conservatives give up 
their strongest weapon of defence, and gain absolutely 
nothing. 

Nor do we find, except in rare instances, that the 
failure of an experiment in over-legislation lessens the 
demand for sunilar action in the future. The failure 
will be attributed not to the fact that there was too 
much state action, but too little. Disasters and losses 
connected with state railroad control are made so many 
arguments in favor of state railroad ownership. The 
difficulties and failures of co-operation under the exist- 
ing system of industry lead to a demand for a "co- 
operative commonwealth." No socialistic experiment 
is proved a failure, in the eyes of its promoters, until 

69 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

all other simultaneous experiments have been stopped. 
It is just here that individualism has its greatest ad- 
vantage for the progress of the community. It tries to 
leave people free to make their own mistakes ; trusting 
that the successful experiment wiU. be followed and the 
unsuccessful one abandoned, and that the community 
will thereby profit from the errors hardly less than from 
the successes of its active members. Though tliis ideal 
of the individuahst is nowhere fully carried out, it is 
unquestionably true that economic individuahsm has en- 
abled nations to learn and profit by the success or failure 
of industrial experiments far more rapidly than any so- 
ciahstic system with the collective action which it neces- 
sitated. The world's great inventions and improvements, 
material and moral, have been made by individual initia- 
tive, and adopted reluctantly by organized governments 
of any form whatever. Individuahsm is educational 
and progressive; socialism in the majority of cases is 
' / not. That education which a sociahst government seeks 
I to foster, represents the wisdom of the present rather 
' than the possibilities of the future. Measured by its 
success in securing these possibihties, sociahsm, whether 
in economics, in pohtics, or in morals, falls short of that 
system of hberty of which men like Mill and Morley 
have been the champions. Such writers do not deny 
that individual Hberty permits grave mistakes wliich 
centrahzed authority would avoid. They defend the 
great principle that each man should be free to make 
his own mistakes in that group of actions which is char- 
acterized as " self-regarding," not because such mistakes 
are few in number, but because their repression involves 
a repression of the best possibihties of good. They 
would leave all possible ways open to the reformer, be- 
cause no man knows by which way he will come. In 

60 



SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 

Morley's expressive language, they refuse to root out 
the tares, not because they thereby leave the wheat a 
better chance to grow, but because " there are in the 
great seed-plot of human nature a thousand rudimentary 
germs, not wheat and not tares, of whose properties we 
have not had a fair opportunity to assure ourselves ; and 
if you are too eager to pluck up the tiires, you pluck up 
with them untried possibilities of human excellence." 

These are the reasons why the system of the indi- 
vidualist has given fuller opportunities than that of 
the socialist for the development of progressive men 
and methods. It is because of this success in serving 
the community that individualistic economics holds the 
position which it does at the present day. It is not 
because the leaders of industry or the exponents of 
the traditional political economy are popular, for they 
are not. It is because their work proves constructive 
and preservative of human happiness, while that of their 
opponents is unsuccessful or destructive. It is doubt- 
ful whether President Cleveland at the time of the 
Chicago labor troubles was any more popular than 
President Debs; but President Cleveland represented 
intellect, while President Debs represented emotion, 
and we know what came of the contest. A nation 
must let intellect rule over emotion, whether it Ukes 
intellect or not. The alternative is political and in- 
dustrial suicide. The proof of intellect and the con- 
dition of holding power is success in foreseeing the 
future. "There is one quality in a general which 
every soldier understands, and that is success." 

Whenever a republic undertakes to carry on a war, 
there is always a popular demand for more vigorous 
action than the judgment of the best trained officers can 
approve. An emotional public sentiment mistakes the 

61 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

caution of a general for apathy, and stigmatizes his scien- 
tific foresight as the result of cowardice or treachery. 
Too often, under the influences of such a sentiment, a 
Fabius is displaced by a Varro, a McClellan by a Pope, 
or a Johnston by a Hood. A Gates is allowed to snatch 
away the well-earned laurels of a Schuyler, and even to 
menace the authority of a Wasliington. But sooner or 
later science finds its vindication in a Cannse or a Cam- 
den, a Manassas or an Atlanta. It is not by yielding to 
popular demands, as did Burnside at Fredericksburg or 
Lee at Gettysburg, that generals preserve their authority 
and their cause. It was a great deed when Thomas held 
his position at Chickamauga for hour after hour against 
the assaults of ever-increasing nmnbers, amid imminent 
peril of destruction ; but it was a far greater deed for 
himself and for the Union, when, fifteen months later, 
he held liis position at Nashville, week after week, 
under increasing popular clamor for premature action, 
and in the hourly peril of ignominious removal. The 
statesman who, under the pressure of popular clamor, 
modifies his cahner scientific judgment to suit an emo- 
tional demand, barters the possibility of a Nashville for 
the probability of a Fredericksburg. 

This illustration -will serve to show why economists 
as a body look with distrust on those who appeal from 
the conclusions of history and deduction to those of 
popular sentiment, and will explain a great deal of their 
alleged intolerance and exclusiveness. It is not true 
that economists make the individual good an end in 
itself. Nothing but ignorance of their writings can 
excuse this belief. Nor is it true that they reject social- 
istic means for the promotion of the pubHc welfare. 
Those who adopt an extreme position in this matter are 
to-day in an insignificant minority. But they strongly 

62 



SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 

disapprove the attempt to " popularize " economics by 
giving too much weight to the conclusions of unin- 
structed. public sentiment. It is not toward the theories 
of the socialists that their hostility is exercised, nor 
even toward their practical proposals, but toward their 
methods of investigation and the manner of tlieir appeal 
to the public. For nothing can be more fatal to that 
efficiency of public opinion on which all good govern- 
ment rests, than the liabit of fixing our eyes on inune- 
diate consequences mstead of pemianent causes, or of 
giving to the emotions of a body of ^vitnesses the 
dignity of the dehberate judgment of a court. 



63 



THE RELATION BETWEEN ECONOMICS 
AND POLITICS 

In some respects economic science is now at tlie height 
of its prosperity. At no previous period has popular 
interest in the subject been so widespread. Our college 
class rooms are thronged with its students. Teachers 
in our secondary schools are striving to find a place for 
it in their curricula. For pubhc lecturers in this domain 
the demand far outruns the supply. Editors of all our 
leading journals seek for writers educated in pohtical 
economy. Large business corporations demand expert 
statisticians for aid in the solution of their most diffi- 
cult problems. In education, in journaHsm, or in finance, 
the trained economist to-day finds a great and growing 
demand for liis services. 

But in one vital respect the conditions are far less 
satisfactory. The influence of our economists on gov- 
ernment and legislation is not only less than it should 
be to-day, but less than it many times has been in the 
past. Our practical politicians, good as well as bad, 
have for the most part an ill-concealed contempt for 
a class of men whom they regard as theorists and vision- 
aries. In individual cases they sometimes ask the 
advice of economists, and — more rarely — take it ; but 
they are far from having the habit of asking or tak- 
ing such advice as an incident to the working of 
government machinery. The application of civil service 

64 



ECONOMICS AND POLITICS 

examinations and other improved methods of filling 
administrative offices has not mended matters in this 
respect. Rather has it emphasized the lack of influence 
of economic science on governmental practice ; for it 
has filled our public service with men technically trained 
in almost every branch of knowledge except economics. 
I am not indeed uimiindful of the valuable work which 
has been done and is being done by our American econo- 
mists on problems of cuiTcncy and taxation, on price 
statistics, on railroad statistics, and other subjects of 
public moment. We have no small number of trained 
men who are ready and able to do good pubhc service 
in these matters. But the very excellence of their work 
only emphasizes the contrast between the subordinate 
position and precarious influence which is to-day accorded 
them, and the commanding places attained by economists 
of the earlier generation. Where can we find among 
our younger men those who are succeeding to the inlieri- 
tance of Walker and Wells, of Charles Francis Adams 
and Horace White ? One of these economists was given 
scope for his powers as superintendent of the census; 
another, as commissioner of the revenue. The record 
of their work has passed into history ; it is a history 
of scientific study and practical influence combined 
which reads almost like romance when contrasted with 
some of the administrative methods of the present day. 
The third of these men, as a Massachusetts public 
official, created a system of railroad regulation which, 
whatever its deficiencies, has nevertheless left its impress 
on the law of a whole continent ; the fourth has proved 
himself the mightiest champion of the cause of sound 
public finance in the country, and has made the journal 
which he edits second to none in the world as a power 
for influencing public opinion and public action. Where 
$ 65 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

shall we look for their successors? We are learning 
more about the theory of utility than did our fathers ; 
but are we doing so much for the realization of that 
theory in the organized life of the nation? 

If the economists fail in their influence upon public 
life, they fail in what is the most important application of 
their studies, and in what may almost be said to consti- 
tute their fundamental reason for existence. Even if 
such failure be only temporary, as I believe it is, it 
furnishes nevertheless a most serious matter for con- 
sideration. Let us strive just now, if we may, to get 
some light on this phase of economic history. Let us 
see why economics and politics have grown apart in the 
immediate past, and consider whether there is any hope 
for their reunion in the immediate future. 

Our work naturally divides itself into two parts. We 
must first acquaint ourselves with the history of eco- 
nomics, and note the changed conceptions of economic 
study which have successively developed. We must 
next do the same thing with politics, and note the 
changes which have taken place both in its underlying 
ideas and in the method of appljdng them. 

It is hardly necessary to say that the conception of 
economics has fluctuated widely from age to age, and 
that the sphere of economic study has altered corre- 
spondingly. The history of this science, like that of 
so many others, begins with Aristotle. In his mind the 
relations between economics and politics were simple. 
Economics meant to him the art of ordering the affairs 
of a household, politics the art of ordering the affairs 
of a state. Each had its own clearly defined field of 
inquiry. The two subjects had indeed points of simi- 
larity ; a man who was famihar with the one was better 
prepared thereby to deal with the other; but funda- 

66 



ECONOMICS AND POLITICS 

mentally their spheres were as distinct as those of geog- 
raphy and astronomy. As a part and a subordinate part 
of the science of economics, Aristotle was forced to 
notice the more unworthy science or rather art of chre- 
matistics, — the science or art of making money. It is 
notorious that Aristotle looked upon this part of the 
subject with disapproval. His idea of business was like 
that of Mr. Caleb Garth in Middlemarch, to whom it 
" never meant money transactions, but the skilful appli- 
cation of labor." But in the minds of Aristotle's suc- 
cessors the subject of money and money-making assumed 
constantly increasing importance in the study of private 
economy. This was in fact an almost necessary conse- 
quence of substituting the labor of freemen for the 
labor of slaves. If the householder was able to obtain 
labor by physical compulsion, he could despise money 
and all things connected therewith; but if he had to 
buy his labor, he was forced to pay attention to the 
means of buying it. Thomas Aquinas had no more 
love for money-getting than had Aristotle ; but the 
social conditions of the time of Thomas Aquinas 
rendered it necessary to take more account of money- 
getting than did the social conditions of the time 
of Aristotle. It was also gradually seen that money 
economy formed a better means of public service than 
the older system of slave labor. Interest, at first unrea- 
sonably condemned by economic moralists, was after- 
wards tolerated and ultimately defended. In the middle 
of the seventeenth century the term " economy " had 
come to be associated almost exclusively with the work 
of money-getting. More than this, the principles of 
chrematistics, or of economy in its modern sense, were 
applied to the conduct of public affairs, and gave rise 
to the study of political economy, in which ideas derived 

67 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

from the study of private business were transferred to 
the work of the statesman. The cameralists^ applied 
the methods of domestic economy to matters of public 
finance, — the conduct of the business affairs of the gov- 
ernment. The mercantilists went yet farther, and tried 
to apply these same methods to the international com- 
merce of the whole people. In other words, they pro- 
claimed the duty of the statesman to assist his people as 
well as his government in making money. At the end 
of the seventeenth century political economy was uni- 
versally understood as an attempt to apply the princi- 
ples of money-getting to the conduct of national affairs ; 
and with this practice in view, it was assiduously studied 
by financiers and by statesmen. 

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have wit- 
nessed a reaction. It began with the French physiocrats, 
who protested against the aims of the mercantiUsts ; 
combating the idea that national wealth could best 
be subserved by national money-making; contending 
that the food of the people rather than the gold or silver 
in circulation measured the national prosperity. It was 
carried still further by their English successors, who 
criticised the means adopted by the mercantilists no less 
than their aims; showing how individual freedom con- 
duced to the development of pubhc wealth, in many 
cases at any rate, far more surely than did legislative 
activity. A new conception of political economy thus 
arose, with higher aims and broader foundations than 
the old. It is hardly necessary to say that the gain, 
both in scientific truth and in practical utihty, was very 
great indeed. It is perhaps more necessary to point out 
some of the dangers which attended the reahzation of 
this gain. 

1 Students of cameralia, affairs of the exchequer. 
68 



ECONOMICS AND POLITICS 

In the first place, there was often a loss of concrete- 
ness. The older political economy expressed its results 
in pounds, shillings, and pence. They might be true or 
they might be false, but they were at any rate embodied 
in a form which was capable of measurement and verifi- 
cation. Not without good cause did the mercantilists 
claim for their reasonings the title of "pohtical arith- 
metic." We may apply to them the words, at once 
appreciative and critical, which Bagehot applied to 
George Cornewall Lewis : " Of course he was not uni- 
formly right, — there were some kinds of facts which he 
was by mental constitution not able wholly to appreciate, 
— but his view of every subject, though it might not 
be adequate, was always lucid. His mind was like a 
registering machine with a patent index : it took in all 
the data, specified, enumerated them, and then indicated 
with unmistakable precision what their sum total of 
effect precisely was. The index might be wrong; but 
nobody could ever mistake for a moment what it meant 
and where it was." In this respect later political econo- 
mists are at a disadvantage. The new political economy 
has substituted a vaguer conception of wealth for the 
more concrete one ; and many of its propositions have 
suffered a corresponding loss of clearness and precision. 
The mercantile school of economists had measured wealth 
in terms of money. The first generation of their critics 
measured it in terms of food. The second and tliird 
generation measured it as " commodities." Our own 
generation measures it in terms of utility. But food is 
a less definite and tangible measure than money ; com- 
modities are a less definite and tangible measure than 
food ; and utility is perhaps the least definite and tangi- 
ble measure of all. People knew exactly how the j)ropo- 
sitions of Sir Thomas Mun applied to any concrete case ; 

69 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

they knew approximately how those of Turgot applied ; 
they can make a fair guess how those of Ricardo or Mill 
apply ; but of the appHcation of those of Sax or Menger 
they can hardly hazard a conjecture. 

And in the second place, with this loss of concreteness 
of conception came a loss of definiteness of aim, — the 
almost inevitable result of substituting the principles of 
a science for the practice of an art. This change was 
hardly noticed in the first generation, when Turgot and 
Smith and their followers were chiefly occupied in 
sweeping away old restrictions ; but when it came to the 
point of building up rather than of pulHng down, the 
loss was felt very strongly. The old political economy 
often gave wrong advice, but at the very worst it was 
explicit and consistent advice. The new pohtical econ- 
omy, in its anxiety to avoid error, falls into vagueness, 
and into apparent if not real inconsistency. For a 
presumptuous claim of knowledge it substitutes either 
controversies or confessions of ignorance. Fools pro- 
verbially rush in where angels fear to tread ; but this 
difference of pohtical method has at times the unfor- 
tunate effect of lessening the practical influence of 
angels upon the affairs of this world. As the art of 
pohtical economy gave place to the science of econom- 
ics, it was placed at an inevitable disadvantage in deal- 
ing with those who sought for the easily mastered rules 
of an art which professed to teach them what they could 
do, rather than the general principles of a science which 
too often indicated only what they could not do. 

This was not the fault of the pohtical economists. It 
was their fault, however, that, when the problem of se- 
curing practical influence became harder, they did not 
always make increased efforts to render their points 
clear to the statesman, but oftentimes took refuge in the 

70 



ECONOMICS AND POLITICS 

seclusion of the schools, and there built up theories of 
society more interesting and profitable to the scientist 
than to the politician. The number of students who 
thronged their lecture rooms increased this temptation. 
Instead of making it a science for statesmen they were 
led to make it a science for schoolmen, ^vith all that 
complex terminology which Giddings so aptly calls its 
jargon. In many cases this process has gone so far as 
to render economics a subordinate department of psy- 
chology rather than of politics ; a theory of motives 
starting from assimiptions that are never realized com- 
pletely, and ending in propositions than can never be 
verified at all. I am far from wishing to cast ridicule 
on metaphysical methods of poUtical economy. Cournot 
and Jevons and the Austrian school have taught us 
a great many things that we did not know before. They 
have substituted good underlying metaphysics for bad 
underlying metaphysics. But the very excellence of 
this foundation has tended to divert attention from the 
superstructure, which, after all, is the thing with which 
we have to deal in practical Ufe. I am disposed to think 
seriously that the excessive use of psychological terms 
and conceptions, to the neglect of purely commercial ones, 
has been the most potent cause to weaken the influence 
of economists among statesmen and men of the world. 

Meantime popular notions of government, and gov- 
ernments themselves, were in the midst of a process of 
evolution which tended to carry them somewhat away 
from the influence of economic theory, even if that 
theory had remained the same. The judiciary, the 
legislature, and the administration were subject each 
of them to separate influences which made them less 
ready to rely on the political economist for advice and 
guidance. 

71 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

It might be thought that the judiciary, at any rate, 
would never have become independent of economic con- 
siderations ; for the scientific study of the law has had 
and still has a close affihation with the scientific study 
of pohtical economy. This affiliation between econom- 
ics and jurisprudence is manifest ahke in their data, 
in their methods, and their conclusions. The funda- 
mental datum of modern economics is property right. 
This is also the datum and starting-point of a large part 
of our legal reasoning. The method of the economist 
is a combination of the historical and the deductive. 
He studies the precedent by which property right has 
been established on the one hand, and deduces the con- 
sequences arising from such property rights on the other 
hand. This combination is also characteristic of the 
methods of the judiciary; the chief difference between 
economists and courts being that the economist considers 
how the individual judgment will act under the given 
conditions, while the court considers how the pubhc 
judgment will act. But this difference of standpoint 
ought not to lead to conflicting or even to inharmonious 
conclusions; for the economist shows over and over 
again how freedom of individual judgment in the pur- 
suit of its ends results in collective good, and the judi- 
ciary shows with equal force how the free activity of 
pubhc judgment, in the pursuit of its ends, leads to the 
highest measure of individual good. Finally, the char- 
acteristic conclusions and precepts of the modern pohti- 
cal economists are summed up in the two words " free 
competition ; " and this is no less characteristically the 
conclusion and precept of our law courts. In relying 
on competition to liberalize commercial practice, econo- 
mists and lawyers have gone hand in hand, sharing in 
tolerably equal measure the glory of habitual success 

72 



ECONOMICS AND POLITICS 

in its application and the odium of occasional error in 
its misapplication. 

But economics and law have to some degree parted 
company; not so much in hostility as in indifference, 
not so much in denying one another's conclusions as in 
isrnorinff them. In the earher times economists and 
jurists were both concerned to harmonize their conclu- 
sions with those of pohtical ethics, and each science was 
thus brought into vital connection with the other. But 
just as economics gradually assumed the character of a 
science or discipline by itself, based upon the action of 
each individual in deciding what was for his own utility 
— and making this exercise of individual judgment an 
absolute fact if not an absolute right; so jurispru- 
dence at almost the same time became an equally ab- 
solute science, based upon the actions of a public wiU, 
the judgments of a sovereign who allowed no control 
except that which his own pleasure deigned to impose. 
Tliis doctrine of sovereignty as a basis of jurisprudence 
has a history closely parallel to that of the doctrine of 
utility as a basis of economics. Until the end of the 
eighteenth century the authority of the law was based 
upon the supposition of a social compact. People 
obeyed the govermnent because the government ren- 
dered certain services to the people. That such a com- 
pact or contract ever existed historically the leading 
exponents of the theory did not believe or even pretend 
to believe. Rousseau himself explicitly says that it 
makes no difference with his social contract theory, 
whether it had any historical basis or not. It was an 
assumption used to give vitality and concreteness in 
the conceptions of that natural justice to which eigh- 
teenth-century writers held that law must conform. 
Hobbes and Locke and Blackstone and Rousseau, with 

73 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

all their wide divergences of opinion on individual points, 
were united in holding to this theory of a compact. 
Hobbes might use it to deny the right of revolution, 
Locke to prove that same right ; Blackstone might use 
it as a conservative force, Rousseau as a destructive 
one. But absolutist and revolutionist, conservative 
and radical, all had before them the conception of a 
higher law of political ethics, limiting the action of the 
courts, just as the economists of the same period held 
to a similar conception limiting the economic action of 
the individual. It was reserved for Bentham to deal 
the death-blow to this theory ; to show not only that the 
social compact had no foundation in history — which 
was an easy enough task, because nobody really thought 
it had — but also no foundation in logic ; to insist that 
so-called natural law was no law at all; that law was 
what the courts said, just because the courts chose to 
say it and for no other reason whatever. When a cer- 
tain court objected to Daniel Webster's logic, " this is 
not law," "it was law until your honor spoke," was 
the historic reply. 

Of the practical gain in clearness of legal decisions 
resulting from the acceptance of the theories of Bentham 
there can be no dispute ; but it was a gain which has 
been purchased at a very serious cost. The courts have 
been estopped from talking no small amount of non- 
sense; but they have also lost no small part of their 
educational influence which they had under the old 
system. For Bentham may be said to have overthrown 
a theory which was historically false and prophetically 
true, and substituted one which was historically true 
and prophetically false. Things have been law, not be- 
cause they were just or even logical, but because the 
courts enunciated them. But it is safe to prophesy that 

74 



ECONOMICS AND POLITICS 

this state of things will continue only so long as the 
courts are respected by the public as being at once just 
and logical. It is right as well as convenient for the 
lawyer to assume that whatever the courts command 
will be law; but only because the courts show them- 
selves clearer-sighted than the body of the nation. The 
authority of the English courts, while nominally derived 
from the crown, has been practically derived from their 
own good sense and progressiveness. A theory which 
leads them to rely more on precedent and less on good 
sense and progressiveness, while it may prevent the more 
commonplace judges from making an exhibition of them- 
selves, nevertheless offers a serious bar to the develop- 
ment of legal authority to meet new circumstances and 
new emergencies; not to speak of the possibility that 
it may at times menace the general respect for the judi- 
ciary and general authority of the law as a whole. As 
a matter of fact, the courts have made themselves in- 
dependent of the help of the economists, by withdraw- 
ing from the consideration of those distinctively modern 
problems where precedent furnishes no clear guide for 
action. In making the corpus juris clearer and more 
consistent with itself, it would seem to a layman as if 
the courts have sometimes fallen short of meeting the 
needs of growing industrial communities. Contrast the 
rapid progress of English law down to the middle of 
the last century in all economic matters, where judges 
were among the most enlightened of reformers, with its 
extremely slow development in the face of modern con- 
ditions. Take the subject of taxation. Have judicial 
decisions adapted themselves to facts ? No. They are 
based on assumptions as to the possibihty of assessment 
of personal property which may have been approximately 
true in the eighteenth century, but which are totally 

75 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

false in the nineteenth. The courts, while protesting 
against unequal taxation, nevertheless refuse to look at 
the cliief practical source of inequality, that source not 
having been a thing of great importance a hundred 
years ago. Or take the matter of transportation. For 
a generation and more our courts insisted on applying 
to the railroad the precedents derived from the highway. 
It is not so very many years since they refused to enter 
upon the most important of all railroad rate evils, the 
evil of discrimination, — saying explicitly that if one 
man's rate was reasonable in itseK it was irrelevant to 
inquire whether another man was charged a lower rate. 
Such instances of lack of attention to modern facts 
might be multiphed indefinitely ; but these are enough 
to show the bad effect of allowing crude attention to 
axioms and precedents to take the place of intelHgent 
discussion of economic effects. It is a grave misfor- 
tune for the public when the legal theory of sovereignty 
of the court and the economic theory of sovereignty of 
the individual result in separating from one another and 
from the needs of practical pohtics two sciences whose 
best work has been done hand in hand with each other, 
and in the most sedulous application to those needs. 

The consequences of this separation have been so 
serious that efforts have been made to reintroduce a con- 
nection by means of " commissions " of various forms ; 
railroad commissions, tax commissions, labor commis- 
sions, and an indefinite number of others. Such bodies, 
it is thought, will, like the courts, represent pubhc 
opinion ; but unlike the courts they will be possessed of 
technical knowledge which will enable them to look for- 
ward to the future and not merely backward at the past. 
On the work of these commissions as a whole, there is 
no need of passing judgment or balancing their good 

76 



ECONOMICS AND POLITICS 

and their evil. Suffice it to say that they have too 
often proved a wholly extraneous element in the de- 
velopment of the law, and that in assuming quasi- 
judicial functions they have antagonized the courts 
instead of helping them. As a matter of constitutional 
law, the attempt to supplement courts by commissions, 
involving as it does a separation of the progressive from 
the conservative, of the technically instructed from the 
legally instructed, is questionable in principle and hkely 
to produce conflicts in practice. As a matter of politi- 
cal experience, I think it is safe to say that technically 
trained commissions have proved themselves more valu- 
able as assistants to the legislature or the administration 
than as supplements to the activity of the courts. 

But why did not this conservatism of the judiciary 
give the economists all the greater opportunity to influ- 
ence the legislature, either directly or indirectly? If 
the courts became the exponents of precedent, why could 
not ParUaments, with the assistance of just such com- 
missions as have been described, be the champions of 
progress? Was there not here a field for the activity 
of economic experts who, seeing farther than their fel- 
lows, could give advice which should be followed and 
should stand ? As economists lost the chance to influ- 
ence judicial decisions, were they not face to face with a 
wider field for influencino: legislative debates ? 

For the better part of a century this possibihty existed. 
In fact it may be said to have lasted nearly as long as 
legislative debate itself lasted. But the days of legisla- 
tive debate are numbered, if they are not already ended. 
Congresses and ParUaments have been compelled to 
abandon their watchword of free speech, and to adopt 
in one form or another the principle of closure. The 
system of representative government, devised originally 

77 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

as a check upon the executive, and admirable as a means 
for giving free discussion to measures of a more or less 
independent administration, has not proved equally suc- 
cessful as a means of shaping actual business in its 
initiatory stages. "Armies," says Macaulay, "have 
won victories under bad generals, but no army ever won 
a victory under a debating society." For the practical 
conduct of public business the legislature is at once an 
unwieldy and an irresponsible body. It is so, in the first 
place, on account of its numbers. When the object of a 
Parhament was to form and impress public opinion, a 
large body of members was indispensable ; but when the 
object is to manage the actual business of government 
intelligently, numbers are a hindrance rather than a help. 
The difficulty is heightened by the prevalence of the 
bicameral system. When the object was the creation 
of pubHc sentiment, two houses secured twice as much 
pubhcity as one ; but when the object is despatch of pub- 
he business, two houses result in divided responsibility, 
with all the consequent delay and chicane. And finally, 
the system of district representation, at first admirable as 
a means of giving influence to all the different sections 
of the community, becomes under present conditions a 
positive disadvantage. In the creation of public senti- 
ment, it gave us exchange of opinions ; in the despatch 
of pubhc business it means exchange of favors. Instead 
of co-operation in the general interests we have log-rolhng 
for particular interests. Under the current system of 
poHtical ethics there is in fact a direct antagonism 
between the theory of economics and the practical 
working of representative government. The economist 
shows how largely the independent action of the parts 
may be made to conduce to the collective good of the 
whole. The practical working of representative govern- 

78 



ECONOMICS AND POLITICS 

ment, making each member primarily responsible to his 
district — or one might better say to the members of his 
own party in his district — means that the collective ac- 
tion of the whole is made a tool to subserve the sepa- 
rate wants of the parts, even though the satisfaction 
of those wants may antagonize the general interest of 
the nation. The history of every tariff bill and of every 
river and harbor bill affords illustrations of this ten- 
dency of our representative system. The economist is 
at a disadvantage in influencing members of the legisla- 
ture, because his ends are different from theirs. He is I 
trying to pursue collective interests ; they are trying — / 
and under the existing condition of things, necessarily 
trying — to balance, to compromise, or in some fashion 
to reconcile divergent ones. 

This difference of aims, which puts the economist at 
a disadvantage in deahng with the legislature, ought 
apparently to put him at a corresponding advantage in 
advising the executive. For the head of the executive 
department, be he wise or unwise, disinterested or self- 
seeking, nevertheless regards himself as a representative 
of the whole people rather than of small sections of the 
people. It would seem that such an executive, on 
whom the nation relies for progress in the face of 
judicial conservatism and for wise collective action in 
the face of legislative particularism, would feel more 
than ever the need of advice from trained economists to 
guide him in the work of administration. That such 
need exists and is felt is unquestionably true; and 
where the administration has power to carry out a 
poHcy of its own the advice of economic experts is 
habitually sought and frequently followed. But it is 
not always the case that the administration has this 
power to carry out a policy of its own. For centuries 

79 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

we have been busy devising constitutional checks of the 
royal prerogative. We have had so much reason to 
fear usurpations of power on the part of the executive, 
that we have not left him with that modicum of power 
which is needed for good government. If he has to 
face an adverse majority in the legislature, he is tied 
hand and foot. Even when his own party is in con- 
trol he must consult the representatives of the various 
districts and pay the price which they exact for sup- 
porting his measures ; and he is too often reduced to the 
yet more questionable expedient of seeking assurance of 
his renomination and re-election in order to have time to 
give his policy a fair trial. Under such circumstances 
he is repeatedly compelled to be a politician first and a 
statesman afterward. However much he may desire 
the advice of economists and even avail liimself of their 
services, he is often divested of the power to utilize 
them; and it too frequently happens that the econo- 
mists, in their encouragement of independent voting on 
each national issue as it arises, deprive themselves of 
that influence within the party councils which is neces- 
sary for carrying any issue whatsoever to its logical test 
and conclusion. 

But things are by no means as bad as they recently 
have been. On the contrary, if we compare the condi- 
tions of to-day with those of twenty years ago, we see 
in some places a very marked increase of economic meth- 
ods and economic influence in the work of government. 
Particularly true is this in municipal affairs. It was 
there that the need for a good business administration 
came most directly home to the citizens. It is there that 
councilmen and aldermen have suffered restrictions of 
their power and that real authority has been given to tlie 
executive. It is there that the credit for good business 

80 



ECONOMICS AND POLITICS 

management and the discredit for bad business manage- 
ment can be most clearly brought home to the offi- 
cial with whom it belongs. It is there, also, that the 
advice of economic experts counts for most. It is not 
an accident that so much of the careful study of prob- 
lems of finance and administration is to-day dealing with 
matters of municipal government ; it is a consequence of 
that increased centrahzation of administrative power 
which gives the expert a fair chance. But the reform 
is not hkely to stop at that point. Whatever we may 
think of imperialism as a sentiment or of national expan- 
sion as a policy — and I was one of those who looked 
upon their hurried adoption with regret — these are 
things to which we are already committed. This policy 
brings new problems of administration upon us as a 
nation, and renders it more necessary than before to 
study the art of national govermnent. When we were 
only governing ourselves we could leave Congress to 
make what laws it pleased, and trust to the good sense 
and poHtical education of the American people to pre- 
vent irreparable damage. But we now have to deal with 
peoples who have not this good sense and this pohtical 
education. More than that, we have to deal with them 
in the sight of all the world, and in the face of hostile 
powers who will be only too ready to make our mis- 
government a pretext for interference. We can no 
longer content ourselves with the laxness of method 
wliich has characterized our dealings with the inhabitants 
of our western territories. 

The need of an efficient army will of itself make it nec- 
essary to give more independence to the administration 
and more opportunity to its expert advisers. The need 
for a govenunent of our new colonies which shall recog- 
nize the principle of trusteeship rather than of spoliation 
6 81 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

must conduce yet more strongly toward the same results. 
The need of increased public revenue to meet our larger 
administrative expenditures will render it indispensable 
to subordinate the demands of the several districts to the 
general necessities of the country. With no colonies 
and a small army we could do what we pleased with our 
revenue bills. With larger possessions and larger neces- 
sities for defence, they must be framed by a responsible 
administration on a sound economic basis. 

Just how this change of governmental methods will 
come about no one can venture to predict. That we 
shall adopt the EngHsh system of cabinet responsibihty 
seems unlikely; but that we shall adopt some system 
which will cause the different branches of our govern- 
ment to operate harmoniously is a foregone conclusion. 
The alternative is national disgrace, if not national ruin. 
Here is the opportunity for the younger economists of 
the country. If their study is worth anything it will 
give them a broader range of data on which to work and 
a clearer perception of consequences for the future. It 
will put them in a position of advantage in giving advice. 
The more responsible the government the more certain 
is it to take such advice. I do not say that the oppor- 
tunity to become advisers and leaders of national pohcy 
should be sought by economists as their sole duty, or to 
the neglect of their other pubHc responsibilities. I do 
not undervalue for a moment the importance of economic 
theory. I have the highest conception of the work of 
our economists as teachers of science. But I beheve that 
their largest opportunity in the immediate future lies not 
in theories but in practice, not with students but with 
statesmen, not in the education of individual citizens, 
however widespread and salutary, but in the leadership 
of an organized body pohtic. 

82 



ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL 
MORALITY 

IN" the preceding paper, attention was called to the 
fact that economists do not now exert in the world of 
poHtics and legislation that influence which ought prop- 
erly to belong to them ; and certain means were indi- 
cated, which, if used, would make their poHtical power 
greater than it is at present. With regard to the fact of 
inadequate influence, there is Uttle room for difference 
of opinion. The economists' lack of touch with the 
practical affairs of government is universally felt. But 
with regard to the means by which they can recover this 
touch, now so nearly lost, there is far more diversity 
of view. Not a few of our American economists 
hold different, and to some degree antagonistic, ideas 
with regard to the means to be pursued in order to in- 
crease the influence of economic science on modern 
pohtical life. The present paper is an attempt to weigh, 
as carefully as possible, these divergent views with 
regard to the methods which " the scholar in pohtics " 
may properly pursue. It is an endeavor to expand more 
fully the argument on those points in the previous dis- 
cussion where the members of the American Economic 
Association have felt themselves most doubtful. 

It has been well said that modern political economy 
contains two distinct parts, — often inextricably inter- 
mingled in fact, yet always separate in principle, — 

83 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

a theory of distribution and a theory of prosperity. 
The theory of distribution shows how the public wealth 
is divided among the different members of the commun- 
ity. It shows the effects of a system of laws or a group 
of commercial conditions on the relative well-being of 
the different classes concerned. It tries to predict how 
changes in those laws or conditions will increase the 
material comfort of some individuals and diminish that 
of others. The theory of prosperity, on the other hand, 
is occupied primarily with the good or evil of the nation 
as a whole. It deals with aggregate results rather than 
with individual ones, and concerns itself with the sepa- 
rate parts only as they must be studied in order to 
understand this aggregate effect. 

The distinction between these two sets of theories is 
not quite the same as that between " static " and " dy- 
namic " economics of which we now hear so much. It 
more nearly coincides with the old antithesis between 
deductive and historical schools of economic study. It 
may perhaps fairly be said to be an accurate statement 
of a distinction for wliich the earlier members of the his- 
torical school were feeling, but which they failed to grasp 
or formulate in precise fashion, — a failure which reacted 
seriously upon the influence of this school in matters of 
economic controversy. Be this as it may, the distinction 
is a real and permanent one. Men may agree absolutely 
in their theories of distribution and disagree toto ccelo in 
their theories of prosperity. Marx in his theory of dis- 
tribution followed Ricardo implicitly; in liis theory of 
prosperity he differed from him at every point. It was 
just because he accepted so thoroughly one part of the 
Ricardian economics that he was able to dissent so con- 
sistently from the other, with a directness of opposition 
born of mutual understanding. It was because each 

84 



ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY 

assumed so fully the existence of free competition, and 

carried out that assumption so completely to certain of 

its logical consequences, that this same power became a 

demigod to the one and a demon to the other. In the 

words of the poet: — 

" Both read the same books, day and night, 
But thou read'st black where I read white." 

As far as a man's political economy takes the form of 
a theory of distribution, it is not sure to be very closely 
connected with his ethical principles, or even with his 
pohtical ones. In framing such a theory he is occupied 
with tracing consequences from observed facts. His 
political antecedents or his ethical prepossessions may 
lead Imn to observe some facts more closely than others, 
or to examine one part of his chain of reasoning more 
critically than another part. But these variations, as 
far as they exist, are errors, even from the man's own 
standpomt, — eri'ors which he is interested in correcting 
as soon as they can be brought clearly home to him. 
He can say, in the words of Dunoyer, " Je n'impose rien, 
je ne propose meme rien : f expose," — I offer neither un- 
positions nor propositions, but expositions. Nor do his 
theories of distribution modify his ethics much more 
than liis ethics modify his theories of distribution ; ex- 
cept, perhaps, so far as the habitual assumption of a set 
of facts and laws leads to the habitual assumption of the 
Tightness of those laws, morally as well as intellectually. 

On the other hand, a man's theory of prosperity is 
closely interwoven with his theories of ethics and of 
politics. Moral and political standards are a determin- 
ing element in our judgment as to whether a nation's 
aggregate condition is good or bad. The habit of mak- 
ing historical generalizations as to national welfare has 
very important effects upon our moral and political judg- 

S5 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

ments as to the ordinary affairs of life. It is at this 
point that the interaction between economics and poli- 
tics, whether by way of mutual aid or mutual criticism, 
is most constant. Only occasionally and incidentally 
do our theories of distribution lead us to intervene in 
political affairs by showing that certain lines of legis- 
lation produce different results from those which are 
contemplated. Daily and hourly does our theory of 
prosperity lead us to such intervention, when we believe 
that the aims of a certain group of moralists or pohti- 
cians are destructive to the well-being of the nation as 
a whole. 

Just at this point, where the possibility of influence 
is greatest, the difficulty which meets the economist 
who strives to maintain a dispassionate and critical atti- 
tude is also keenest. In his theory of distribution he 
can readily remain a passive observer of facts. He can 
measure and weigh the results of competition, as he can 
measure and weigh the results of gravitation or of bio- 
logical selection ; and he can guard himself against error 
in fact or deduction by the same methods which are 
used by the physicist or the biologist for the same 
purpose. But when he comes to measure the aggregate 
merit of the total result, he has a different task and 
a far harder one. 

It was the underlying assumption of the preceding 
paper that even in this hard task the scientific knowl- 
edge possessed by the economist enables him to come 
nearer to its fulfilment than can his fellow members 
of the community; that in this field of exceptional 
doubt he should undertake to realize the noblest ideals 
as a scientific man who stands above the clouds of preju- 
dice, and therefore sees farther than those about him ; 
that it is his high mission to be the representative and 



ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY 

the champion of the permanent interests of the whole 
community, in the face of conflicting claims from repre- 
sentatives of temporary or partial ones. 

This view of the mission and the duties of the politi- 
cal economist has been challenged on three grounds : 
as bad psychology, bad politics, and bad ethics. 

"We are told, in the first place, as a matter of practical 
psychology, that no man can make his judgment as to 
national well-bemg independent of his social antecedents 
and his ethical training. If he has grown up among 
soldiers, he will have one set of standards ; if he has 
grown up among business men, he will have a second; 
if he has grown up among literary men, he will have 
a third ; if he has grown up among laborers, he will have 
a fourth. Strive as he may to dissociate himself from 
effects of education and environment, he can at best be 
but partially successful. His political vision suffers not 
only from near-sightedness, but from astigmatism. The 
former he may perhaps correct ; no power on earth can 
enable him to correct the latter, or even to gain an 
objective estimate of its influence upon his observations. 
Robert Malthus was a disinterested man, and so was 
Henry George ; yet in neither case was such disin- 
terestedness sufficient to protect them from obliquities 
of moral vision which led to diametrically opposite con- 
clusions as to the conditions of public prosperity. A 
man may have the intention to be impartial, and may 
be perfectly candid in the belief that he has carried out 
this intention; but that only makes matters worse, 
because this delusion prevents him from recognizing 
the need of applying outside correctives to his judg- 
ment, and often leads him to impugn the fairness of 
anybody else who suggests such correctives. Why not, 
under these circumstances, admit freely the difficulty 

87 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

under which we labor in making objective judgments? 
Why not recognize from the first that each of us repre- 
sents a locality or a class, and that the moral judgment 
of each observer is sure to be affected and to some 
degree distorted by his own personal prepossessions? 
Such a course, frankly adopted, its advocates claim, will 
keep the bad men from hypocrisy, the good men from 
self-deception, and the large number of men who are 
neither very good nor very bad from that mixture of 
hypocrisy and self-deception which contrives to com- 
bine all the evils of them both. 

We are told, in the second place, as a wholly inde- 
pendent hne of argument, that even if an economist 
possessed rare mental and moral quahties like those of 
John Stuart Mill, which enabled him to sympathize with 
all classes, he ought nevertheless, as a matter of practi- 
cal politics, to identify his work with the aspirations 
of some one class distinctively. The assumption by an 
economist that he represents the total interest of the 
community rather than the interest of one part or group 
in that community exposes him to the suspicion of being 
either a pharisee or a hypocrite, — either a man who 
over-estimates his own righteousness, or one who pre- 
tends to a righteousness which he does not possess. If 
either of these titles is a just one, it is fatal to a man's 
success as a pohtical reformer. If it is once suspected 
to be just, it will prove a heavy weight around his neck. 
Even if a man believes himself to be wholly free from 
either hypocrisy or pharisaism, it is a wise measure for 
him to keep out of the company of hypocrites and phari- 
sees. He will be a more efficient reformer if he claims 
a little less for liis mission and can get those lesser 
claims recognized, than if he claims everything and 
gets no recognition at all. 

S8 



ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY 

We are further told that whether he be considered 
a hypocrite or not, he will be entitled a visionary, and 
justly so. The general pubUc whose interests he repre- 
sents is not a working pohtical force. Its wants are so 
vague and so remote that there is no means of getting 
them recognized in the concrete work of legislation and 
of government. You must appeal to locahties and to 
classes. Locahties have their representatives, classes 
have their organs. Each locality and each class has its 
pubhc sentiment, which in one way or another is a hving 
power in pohtics. This existence of a coherent pubhc 
opinion and of a definite interest is a necessary condition 
for the social reformer who would be more than a pure 
theorist. Current opinion is liis material, class interest 
is his tool. No man, however great, can hope to accom- 
plish his results with neither tools nor materials ready 
to his hand. Even if you beheve yourself wholly dis- 
interested you must appeal to classes and secure the 
partial good wliich is attainable, rather than aim at 
the greater good which you are from the outset fated 
to miss. 

They tell us further that this view of the matter 
represents not only practical pohtics but practical ethics. 
Life in a modern free community is an interaction and 
interplay between the several members of that commun- 
ity. Each individual is working for ends of his own, 
distmct from those of other individuals. Each class 
has standards and ideals of its own, differing from 
those of other classes. Civil Uberty is but a recogni- 
tion of these differences, — permission to the various 
members of the state to pursue their own several ends 
under the protection of a common law. According 
to this view, the man who would sink the interest of a 
class in a supposed general public interest is but depriv- 

89 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

ing that class of its own natural safeguard in the struggle 
for existence. If it works for itself, it gets what it can 
— sometimes more than it ought, sometimes less than it 
ought; but in a reasonably well-ordered civil society it 
takes its chances with the others. If, on the other hand, 
a single group, in its zeal for the general good, omits to 
pursue its own group interest, it causes a want of balance 
between the parts, upsets the conditions of the game, and 
contributes rather to its own annihilation than to the 
predominance of those conceptions with which it has 
identified itself. Let us have fair play; let us have a 
fair chance for conflicting views to struggle one with 
another, as a condition of progress for the whole society. 
This is the cry among no small number of those who 
think they have studied the conditions of modern prog- 
ress most carefully. 

Widespread and plausible as are some of these views, 
I desire to take fundamental issue with those who sup- 
port them. 

The system of political ethics just outlined is an 
outgrowth of our experience with two important insti- 
tutions, — competition and representative government. 
Competition has led people to see how frequently the 
self-interest of the individual, when given free play, con- 
duces to the general advance of the public. Represen- 
tative government has shown how a full expression of 
opinion by those who speak for the several parts or 
classes in the community can be made to contribute to 
an advance which inures to the advantage of all parts 
and all classes together. In spite of all these facts, I be- 
lieve that the theory of struggle and compromise as a nor- 
mal means of progress needs restatement ; and that the 
man who looks below the surface in the study of these 
two institutions will be brought to conclusions directly 

90 



ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY 

opposite from those which prevail in so much of the cur- 
rent tliought of the world to-day. 

Does the history of competition give ground for the 
view that a struggle between different parts for their 
class interests works out an economic harmony through- 
out the nation ? Not at all. It shows, on the contrary, 
that struggles within each class, antagonistic for the mo- 
ment to the apparent interests of that class, so conduce 
to the interest of many other parts of the body politic as 
to promise a generally beneficent result. No economist 
of any reputation would hold for a moment that an 
economic conflict necessarily works out a just relation 
between the conflicting parties. What the champion of 
competition holds is rather that this conflict under 
proper conditions may become a means of affording pro- 
tection and advantage to outsiders. It is not a contest 
between classes, but a contest within classes, which he 
seeks to perpetuate ; and he would perpetuate it because 
he can prove, or thinks that he can prove, that it con- 
duces to a common interest more wide and more lasting 
than those which the individual classes, if organized into 
trusts or trades unions, would seek to pursue. 

It is popularly said that competition is only the form 
which the struggle for existence takes in modern civil- 
ized society. This is at once true and false, — true in 
form, false in the suggestions to which it gives rise. 
The fact is that modern civilized communities have so 
regulated the struggles for existence that they tend on 
the whole to the benefit of third parties rather than to 
their detriment. Two cats struggle to eat the same bird ; 
two bosses compete to employ the same workman. From 
the standpoint of the bosses, the transaction bears some 
analogy to the case of the cats. From the standpoint 
of th6 workman, the transaction bears no analogy what- 

91 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

ever to the case of the bird. The more cats there are 
the worse for the bird, as well as for the cats ; the more 
bosses there are the worse for the bosses, but the better 
for the workman. When Adam Smith showed the 
efficiency of competition as a means of regulating price 
and of increasing useful production, he furnished a 
powerful defence for the existing social order. He can- 
not, however, for that reason, be fairly charged with 
having been an advocate of the interests of the property 
owner. The weight and force of his reasoning lay in 
the fact that he showed the beneficent effects of such 
free competition of property owners upon all people, 
whether they owned property or not. He may have 
exaggerated those good effects and underrated the evils 
by which they were accompanied. This is a point which 
I shall not now discuss. But his permanent and deci- 
sive influence as a social reformer lay not in his identi- 
fication of the views or interests of any class, but in Ms 
discovery of a means for preventing the umiecessary 
development of class antagonisms. The success of com- 
petition, far from warranting us in the adoption of a 
system of political morality and a theory of political 
progress based on advocacy of class interests, proves 
rather the advantage and even the necessity of sub- 
ordinating those interests to a "wider common good. 

With the institution of representative government 
the case is somewhat different. Here we have a public 
organization of localities and classes, and a recognition 
of such classes in the actual work of government. It 
would therefore seem as if the success of this system 
were a powerful argument on the side of that theory of 
politics and of ethics which regards the good of the 
whole community as best to be reached by a compromise 
between the aims of different sections of the community. 

92 



ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY 

But a profounder study of constitutional history leads 
to an opposite conclusion. It shows that parliaments 
and congresses, in the really great periods of their his- 
tory, have been valuable, not as a field of compromise 
between local interests, but of information as to general 
ones ; not for the consummation of private bargains but 
for the creation of pubUc spirit. 

Down to the end of the last century the Enghsh 
ParHament, as its name imphed, was essentially a place 
for discussion. Representatives from different locaUties 
met at Westminster to interchange views as to the state 
of the nation. Each member reported to tlie others the 
feeUngs and wants of his locahty; each received from 
his feUow members enlightened views as to the condi- 
tion of the country as a whole, which he was able to 
report at home and make the basis of practical action in 
his section of the community. The essential function 
of the early parUaments was the creation of a united 
pubhc sentiment. They roused the interest of English 
gentlemen outside of the sphere of their petty local ex- 
igencies, and enabled them, by common action, to resist 
the extensions of the royal prerogative to which, in the 
absence of such common action, they must separately 
have fallen victims. It is true that the Houses of Par- 
liament had large functions in addition to this ; but they 
all grouped themselves round tliis central work. Even 
the right of the Commons to originate measures of taxa- 
tion, so sedulously attacked by the kings, and so jeal- 
ously guarded by parliaments, had its chief importance 
not as a means of avoiding the imposition of burdens 
upon the people, but as a means of compelling the 
monarcli to call representatives of different parts of the 
people together for the authoritative presentation of 
popular opinion. At the close of the last century, when 

93 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

other countries adopted institutions modelled on tlie 
English Parliament, it was intended that they should 
preserve this same function as debating bodies ; and the 
most glorious pages in the history of the United States 
Congress are those in which pubhc opinion was formed 
and pubhc spirit roused by speeches of such men as 
"Webster and Clay. Just as in the sphere of commerce 
competition enabled members of the different parts of 
the business community to get something wider than a 
class view point and compelled them to work to a com- 
mon end, so in the sphere of pohtics did representative 
government enable and compel members of" the differ- • 
ent geographical sections to get something wider than 
the local view point, and to see what was the general 
sentiment of the nation of which they formed a part. 

But in the course of the present century our repre- 
sentative assembhes have ceased to be places for debate. 
The extension of telegraph and postal service has given 
the different parts of the community means of informa- 
tion more rapid, although in some respects perhaps less 
trustworthy, than that which was furnished by their 
congressional representatives in the olden time. The 
press has taken the place of the legislature as a forum 
for the formation of pubhc sentiment. Parhaments and 
congresses have become bodies for the makmg of laws 
rather than for the making of opinions. That tliis change 
has been accompanied by a loss in salutary influence of 
legislative bodies is, I tliink, unquestionable. No longer 
do the members strive to impress their several convic- 
tions on the whole body of which they form a part ; they 
strive rather to form a compromise in wliich the inter- 
ests of the part which they represent shall have ade- 
quate recognition. This substitution of compromise for 
conviction as the ideal of legislative activity is perhaps 

94 



ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY 

the greatest and most pervasive evil under which our 
pohtical machinery suffers. It shows its effect in the 
demorahzing principle that the representative should be 
guided in his utterances and his votes by the opinions of 
liis constituents, rather than by his own, — a principle 
which, in spite of all protests, has come to be generally 
accepted as a datum of practical politics. It deprives 
the member of the legislature of the educational influ- 
ence incident to his position. It makes him an agent 
not only of his district, but of his party within his dis- 
trict. It manifests its results in the debates on appro- 
priation bills, where the members who stand up for the 
general interest of the treasury are increasingly rare, 
and those who make claims for the expenditure of 
money on behalf of their locahties — and often on behalf 
of private interests witliin their localities — become 
constantly louder. It shows itself even in general leg- 
islation, where the character of modern statutes as a 
patchwork of private demands has become only too 
notorious. 

AU this has gone so far as to produce a change in the 
public estimate of parliamentary bodies. The glorifica- 
tion or idealization of the legislature, so common in gen- 
erations immediately gone by, is now rapidly passing 
away. In matters of municipal government we are 
lessening the appHcation of the representative system — 
giving more power to the mayor and those persons 
appointed by the mayor, and less to the representatives 
of the several districts; because, "svith the amount of 
business that is done in the ordinary municipality, we 
cannot afford to let the general interests of the whole 
be jeopardized in behalf of the several parts. The same 
tendency shows itself in connection with state legisla- 
tures, whose sessions are now being made less frequent, 

95 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

and whose sphere of action is being narrowed by consti- 
tutions and other instruments providing for a reference 
of all important laws to the direct vote of the people. 
It is not necessary for the purpose of this argument to 
say whether tliis change be an improvement or not ; it 
is at any rate a significant sign of the trend of the times. 
The abandomnent of the duty of debate as to the com- 
mon interest, and the substitution of the work of nego- 
tiation as to the private and partisan interests of the 
several districts, have tended to convert the representa- 
tive assembly from an object of pubUc confidence to one 
of public distrust. 

The causes wliich have prevented competition in busi- 
ness and representative government in pohtics from fully 
safeguarding the interests of the community in the days 
just gone by are Hkely to be accentuated in the near 
future. 

Improvements in machinery and in business organiza- 
tion during recent years have developed to such an ex- 
tent that competition, in the old sense, is in many lines 
a thing of the past. It can no longer be utihzed with- 
out sacrifice of public as well as private economy. We 
cannot have parallel railroads or competing water-works 
without a loss, either from increased expense of plant or 
diminished convenience in service. We cannot, in a great 
many lines of manufacture, have competition as we had 
it twenty-five years ago, without disastrous fluctuations 
in price and the danger of commercial crises due to irreg- 
ular investments of capital. AH these facts are so 
famiUar at the present day that it is useless to enlarge 
upon them. Business has become a trust, in a sense far 
different from that which the accidental application of 
this word has carried with it, — a thing involving a dele- 
gation of power by the pubhc to the hands of a few men; 

96 



ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY 

a delegation of power which these men can misuse to 
the detriment of others without being immediately over- 
taken by any legal or commercial penalty. That they 
will themselves suffer in the long run from such misuse 
of powers intrusted, is very probably true; but tliis 
adverse effect is so remote and obscure that we cannot 
rely upon it as a protection to commercial society in 
the way that we could rely on every-day competition in 
the smaller and more individualized business of fifty 
years ago. The correctives to the abuse of individual 
selfishness in the commercial world to-day are so much 
less immediate and automatic than they once were that 
very few persons now preach unlimited competition as a 
means of promoting the general good. So marked, 
indeed, is this reaction that there is danger of our having 
too httle confidence in individual initiative in the imme- 
diate future, and of regulating these trusts by an exer- 
cise of pubHc authority which may prove in the long 
run less wise than private enterprise itself. 

A similar change is taking place in matters pohtical. 
Our municipahties are giving examples of combined 
action in the way of pubhc works on a scale wliich would 
have been regarded as unpossible a century ago. Our 
country as a whole is undertaking yet larger combina- 
tions in the shape of colonial empire. What will be the 
ultimate result of this last change of national character 
it is far too early to predict. But one thing is certain. 
It will necessarily be accompanied by a recognition of the 
fact that pubhc office is a pubhc trust more fully than it 
has been recognized in the past. A federation of states 
of approximately equal strength may govern one another 
on a principle of separate pursuit of selfish interests; 
and although there will be some aggregate loss through 
the preference of local interests to general ones, there is 
7 97 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

likely to be at least a relative fairness when each mem- 
ber of the federation is strong enough to secure its own 
share of the plunder, and to protect itself from undue 
imposition. But when we come to administer the affairs 
of a weaker nation to which we do not and cannot give 
pohtical autonomy, the evils of the old system become 
so obvious and the need of ideals in politics becomes so 
exacting, that even those who in their past public life 
have scoffed at the conception of a higher law than their 
own selfishness are, under the new conditions, compelled 
by very shame to appeal to such a higher law. The more 
completely our undertakings, whether private or public, 
industrial or pohtical, take the character of trusts, the 
more impossible does it become for those who are placed 
in authority to represent personal or class interests with- 
out gross violation of what we, in our every-day life, 
recognize as fundamental dictates of sympathy or of 
justice. 

If it were true that each man's mental horizon were 
bounded by his class interests ; if the man who claimed 
to look beyond them were sure to be regarded as a 
visionary or a hypocrite; if we were constitutionally 
inaccessible to any political motives higher than those 
of rational egoism, — this would simply mean that we 
were fundamentally unfit for the task that is before us. 
It would mean that the trusts which were placed in the 
hands of our citizens by the new conditions of business 
and of pohtics were of a kind which we could not fulfil. 
It would indicate that the largeness of our problems 
would ruin us morally and politically, as Rome was 
ruined by her imperial problems two thousand years 
ago. But I have faith to beHeve that this is not the 
fate marked out for us to-day. I believe that the Amer- 
ican, people and the modern civihzed world in general 

98 



ECONOMIC THEORY AND POLITICAL MORALITY 

will solve these problems, as they have solved other 
problems which have come up in the successive phases 
of their history ; that we shall meet the new collective 
needs of industry and government with a true collectiv- 
ism of spirit and purpose. Not with that superficial 
collectivism or sociahsm which, hke the individualism 
which it strives to supersede, often makes too much of 
mere poHtical machinery, and believes that men are to 
be saved by their institutions rather than their charac- 
ters ; but with a public spirit which demands, as a part 
of the national ethics, that men shall shape their course 
on the basis of conviction rather than of compromise, 
and that pubhc discussion shall look toward a common 
understanding rather than a bargain. Because the poht- 
ical and commercial methods of the past have led to 
compromise rather than conviction, or because the suc- 
cessful man of affairs must be ready to compromise when 
he fails to convince, let us not say that all politics and 
all commerce is but a tissue of compromises, and that a 
political or commercial science which pretends to be 
something broader and better than this is an illusion. 
Let us as economists take the opportunity that Hes 
before us, in the face of new conditions for whose treat- 
ment the old methods are proving themselves inadequate. 
Let us employ our understanding with regard to public 
needs as a means of evoking public spirit. Let us use 
whatever special knowledge we have with all the breadth 
of purpose which it is in our power to attain, and make 
ourselves, as becomes men of science, representatives of 
nothing less than the whole truth. 

L.ofC. 



99 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 



During the last hundred years there has been a dis- 
tinct progress in the study of legal and political institu- 
tions. The methods of investigation have become more 
scientific, the results more sound and more permanent. 
But in the study of moral sentiments, and of the ethical 
framework of society, the advance has been far less 
marked. The ethical science of to-day, in its assump- 
tions and its processes, bears a strong resemblance to 
the pohtical science of a century ago. It is the aim of 
these papers to apply to the investigation of morals those 
modes of analysis which have proved most fruitful in the 
study of political institutions ; and to see whether the 
advance in method which has actually been accomplished 
in the study of politics cannot be achieved in ethics also. 

Down to the beginning of the present century, the 
students of political science were pretty sharply divided 
into two classes. One group started from the assump- 
tion that there must be somewhere a sovereign unlimited 
in authority. Another, and in the eighteenth century 
a more influential group, started from the assumption 
of an absolute right of individual liberty. Each con- 
ception was abstract and metaphysical rather than his- 
torical. For the time being, the representatives of liberty 
made more impression than the representatives of sov- 
ereignty, because practical men in the eighteenth century 

100 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

were resisting the abuse of authority on the part of 
absolute monarchs, and were quite ready to accept any 
theory of politics which seemed to justify such resist- 
ance. The signers of the Declaration of Independence 
based their theories on their practice, not their practice 
on their theories. They assumed that all men had equal 
and inahenable rights to hfe, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness ; but they would have been far from ready to 
push this assumption to the logical conclusion which tlie 
anarchist would draw from it. They believed in liberty, 
because more liberty, under the existing conditions, 
seemed a desirable tiling, and absolute sovereignty an 
undesirable one; not because they were prepared to 
carry their avowed principle to its extreme development. 
In the same way those who were most vigorous in 
asserting the centraHzed authority of a sovereign were 
governed by practical considerations in so doing. When 
Bentham averred that law was the expression of a sov- 
ereign will, and that whatever the sovereign commanded 
was law, it was because he saw the confusion wliich 
would result if the judges attempted to take any other 
ground.^ He rejected doctrines of liberty and natural 
rights, because doctrines of liberty and of natural rights 
produced bad legal decisions. Bentham himself was 
anything but a partisan of absolute monarchy. He 
recognized clearly enough that, even in states where 
the sovereign might theoretically command anytliing he 
pleased, such an exercise of power would in practice 
often produce a revolution.^ Bentham's fault lay not 

^ The Fragment on Government was an answer to certain theories 
broadly stated by Blackstone, and concerned itself directly with the im- 
possibility of carrying out those theories in judicial practice. 

2 Bentham failed to recognize that nullification, rather than revolution, 
is the practical check on the power of the sovereign, and that the habitual 
obedience to a determinate superior, of which he has so much to say, is 

101 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

in his views, but in his method. He formulated a meta- 
physical standard of sovereignty wliich was useful for 
certain purposes ; but he was unable so to set the terms 
of that standard as to avoid its apphcation in cases where 
it was worse than useless.^ 

There was one man in the eighteenth century who 
held nineteenth century views on the relation of liberty 
and law. This was Edmund Burke. But even in the 
case of Burke, these views were the result of intuition 
rather than of reasoned judgment. They appear in the 
form of flashes of insight, and not as a consistent scien- 
tific system.^ It was left for John Stuart Mill to lay 
the groundwork for the development of such a system. 
It was left for writers like Morley, who combined the 
views of Darwin with the political knowledge of Mill, 
to carry this development to its logical conclusion. To 
them, and to the whole school of modern historical 
investigators, liberty and sovereignty are not incom- 
patible. To such men, hberty is not a mere postulate 
of logic, nor an assumed state of nature, but a political 

an obedience within limits. If the sovereign transgresses these limits, 
" passive resistance " follows ; and this phrase, however much ridiculed 
by a certain school of jurists, marks a historical fact of the utmost im- 
portance. Compare A. L. Lowell on The Limits of Sovereignty, Essays 
on Government, pp. 189-222. 

1 Actually, Benthara did a great deal to prevent his legal system from 
being carried to dangerous extremes. His doctrine of utilitarianism taught 
men to judge of the law without reference to what the sovereign had 
commanded. Sir Erederick Pollock, in his History of the Science oj 
Politics, has pointed out that the English doctrine of absolute sovereignty 
is greatly modified by the English practice of resisting a policeman, and 
that on the continent of Europe, where their theories are less absolute 
but their policemen more so, the net result is much less favorable to free 
development than in England. 

2 It is a great merit of John Morley to have brought out these points 
in Burke's writings with a clearness which would probably have surprised 
Burke himself. 

102 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

institution which forms part of a national life. They 
trace authority and liberty to one and the same cause, 
— the necessity of self-preservation for the social organ- 
ism. Authority exists because the peoples that recog- 
nized authority have lived, while the peoples that 
insisted on anarchy have perished. Liberty exists be- 
cause the peoples that allowed authority to be despotic 
perished from the rigidity of their political organism, 
while those who were able to find a place for individual 
freedom as a part of their scheme of authority learned 
to adapt themselves to new conditions, and continued to 
hve where the others died. It is a lesson of history 
that a nation must combine discipline and freedom in 
order to reach the plane of modern civilized life. 

Substitute moral authority for legal authority, private 
judgment for personal liberty, and it will not be hard to 
apply the parallel to ethics. Here too we find a conflict 
between the champions of an abstract moral sovereignty 
inherent in the church, and the champions of an equally 
abstract liberty of judgment inherent in the individual ; 
the latter being to-day stronger than the former, because 
the practical men of to-day want to do their thinking for 
themselves, instead of having others do it for them. 
Yet those who assert the right of private judgment as 
a principle, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred shrink 
back in horror from the moral anarchy which would be 
produced by its logical application. The theory of an 
absolute and unbounded right of private judgment, occa- 
sionally postulated by Protestants of every shade, but 
consistently carried out only by extremists like Pro- 
fessor Clifford, is in fact a purely abstract assumption, 
as unhistorical as Rousseau's natural right to liberty.^ 

^ A curious example of inconsistency of political and ethical theory is 
furnished in the first six chapters of Austin's Jurisprudence, where an 

103 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

There has never been a case where a large body of 
people really carried the postulates of Protestantism to 
their logical conclusion. The nearest approach to it 
perhaps occurred in Greece in the fourth century before 
the Cliristian era, at the very time of the downfall of 
the vitahty of Greece as a nation, and in intimate con- 
nection therewith. The right of private judgment can 
be admitted as the right of civil liberty can be admitted, 
as a privilege of those peoples and those individuals 
who will not exercise it destructively. But the man 
who makes it a starting-point in his logic has apparently 
no means of so limiting its application as to stop short 
of moral anarchism. 

On the other hand, those who make authority their 
starting-point or postulate have no means of stopping 
short of despotism nor of avoiding the practical conse- 
quences which despotism involves. The Catholic theory 
of ecclesiastical sovereignty may be more logical than 
the Protestant theory ; but in the attempt to apply that 
theory the Catholic church has repeatedly obstructed 
progress, moral as well as material. The efforts of 
enlightened Catholics in the direction of reform, whether 
successful or unsuccessful, have served to show how 
strong is the resistance to such reform which their 
philosophical system offers. Nor is the difficulty of 
combining authority and progress confined to those who 
have written and acted in connection with the Roman 
church. It is one which besets every thinker who lets 
the collective judgment of society overshadow that of 
the individual. It is one from which neither Hegel 
nor Comte could wholly free himself.^ Each of these 

absolute doctrine of sovereignty in law is brought into contrast with an 
equally absolute doctrine of private judgment in morals. 

^ Compare Mill, The Positive Philosophy ofAuguste Comte, pp. 68-74. 

104 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

writers was thoroughly imbued with the idea of prog- 
ress. Each sought to trace in history a continuous 
onward movement, and to make the presence or absence 
of such movement the standard of good or evil. Yet 
each was hampered by his own conception of authority 
as residing in society and not in the individual ; for the 
morals which society would at any given time prescribe 
were those of the present, not those of the future. The 
man who would be the instrument of moral good must 
be for the moment, according to the definition of Hegel, 
immoral in thought, if not in act. He could only help 
society to continue doing right by himself doing what 
society considered wrong. When Lassalle asked how 
there could be any reform without a revolution, he 
asked a question which, from the Hegelian standpoint, 
was unanswerable. 

Yet it is a question which every nation must answer 
both for its pohtics and for its morals. In the exist- 
ing stage of civilization it is inadmissible for a people 
either to be stationary or to be revolutionary. In the 
former case it will be left behind. In the latter case 
it will be wrecked. There must be some workable means 
of reconciling authority and liberty. It was because the 
English first wrought out a practical reconcihation of 
this sort, however unsystematic, tliat England took the 
lead in European political development. 

The application of Darwinian methods to the study 
of morals has opened the way to a theoretical solution 
on the same lines as the practical one. To a consistent 
Darwinian Lassalle's question presents no insuperable 
difficulty. To the Darwinian neither moral authority 
nor moral hberty is based on a metaphysical standard, 
but on an historical one. Each is justified in so far 
as it preserves the race that holds it. Authority, in 

105 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

morals as well as in law, has grown up because without 
submission to such authority a race inevitably perished. 
Liberty has grown up because, if the authority was 
carried to the point of despotism, progress was wholly 
impossible ; and the race without progress perished as 
surely as the race without authority, even though it 
took a longer time to do it. In the mind of a Dar- 
winian, repression of error is not necessarily or generally 
a clear gain to society ; for the repression of all error 
necessarily involves the repression of all change, and 
the toleration of a score of errors does less harm than 
the prevention of a single piece of permanent good. 
IntUvidual cases of error are self-destructive, individual 
cases of good self-preservative. That system has the 
best chance of long-continued life which allows the 
highest degree of individual variation without destroy- 
ing authority as a whole. ^ When an organism, a spe- 
cies, or a nation has ceased to vary, it has ceased to 
grow; and any such total cessation of growth is worse 
than a dozen instances of growth which is useless or 
misdirected. 

The man who has accustomed himself to make sur- 
vival a test of right has much in common with the 
upholders of authority on the one hand, and with the 
upholders of liberty on the other. He unites the logi- 
cal vantage ground of the Catholic with the practical 
vantage ground of the Protestant. Yet comparatively 
little use has been made of the survival test in dealing 
with questions of moral judgment. The science of 
ethics has been regarded as a branch of psychology 
rather than as a branch of history or of sociology. Its 
study has been divorced from the study of law. We 
have accustomed ourselves to think of law and morals 

1 Morlej, On Compromise, pp. 266-281. 

106 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

as subjects wholly separate. We have been taught to 
look to our feeling, to our conscience, to our reason, 
as sources of moral authority ; to the courts and to the 
legislatures as soiirces of legal authority ; and above all, 
as a matter of cardinal importance, to keep these two 
things sharply distinguished. 

In the decision of most of the practical questions 
which come up in every-day Hfe, this separation is most 
salutary. But in judging the past history of morals, or 
in formulating theories of moral development, we are in 
danger of carrjdng this habit of mind too far. The 
practice of drawing a hard and fast line between law 
and morals is something pecuhar to the nineteenth cen- 
tury ; and even in the nineteenth century it has not 
been quite so universal as we have supposed. The 
separation which we deem to exist as a matter of neces- 
sity is more or less confined to our o"\vn time and to our 
own country. There is less of it in Europe than in 
America ; less in Catholic nations than in Protestant 
ones ; less and less of it as we go farther back in the 
world's history. Even in our o^vn country to-day the 
ruder communities show a tendency to revert to the time 
when law and morals were not thus separate. The 
justice of the half-savage tribes in earher stages of 
history finds its parallel in the justice of the vigilance 
committees of the frontier towns. This savage justice 
is based on something which according to modern con- 
ception is neither law nor morals, — a body of tribal 
customs, of which we can hardly say whence they 
derive their authority. Their sanctions are of such 
a character that we know not whether to call them 
religious, legal, or ethical. These ancient customs are 
certainly not law in the modern sense ; for they de- 
pend for their force not upon any organized authority, 

107 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

but upon the collective feeling of a community, every 
one of whose members is ready to punish any trans- 
gression. Yet they are equally far from being morals 
in the modern sense ; for they are kept up, not by the 
conscience of the individual, but by a system of organ- 
ized terrorism, an ever-present lynch law, ready to be 
put into execution upon the slightest provocation. 

It is not necessary for our purpose to look in detail at 
the process by which this body of tribal customs was 
evolved. Much of it can be only a matter of conjec- 
ture.^ But taking these customs as our starting-point, 
we have the means of tracing with a fair degree of com- 
pleteness the subsequent course of events by which they 
were separated into two parts, out of which grew law 
and morals respectively .^ 

First, with the development of military organization 
the work of punishing infractions of the tribal morality, 

^ Considering the date at which it was written, Bagehot's Physics and 
Politics shows marvellous fertility in this form of conjecture, and his con- 
clusions may be quite generally accepted as working hypotheses, in the 
absence of anything better. There are certain parts of early law and mor- 
als for whose history we have more definite evidences. McLennan, Primi- 
tive Marriage, makes an attempt to trace the institution of the family 
through successive stages from the time when the horde first introduced 
the practice of female infanticide as the crudest and most obvious means 
of limiting population. For the early development of property right the 
detailed evidence is also fairly decisive. In the hunting stage we find only 
rights of possession ; in the pastoral stage which followed it we find cer- 
tain ideas of collective ownership of land and separate ownership of cattle ; 
while with the agricultural stage the permanent settlement was marked 
by the beginnings of individual property right, contemporaneous perhaps 
(though this may be fanciful) with the beginning of individual responsi- 
bility in morals. 

2 This separation, in the form here described, which is characterized by 
Comte as "Military Polytheism," seems to have been peculiar to Europe. 
The law of the Semitic nations has taken a more purely theocratic form ; 
and the same result, though not without a struggle, was reached among 
the Aryans of Asia. 

108 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

instead of being the indiscriminate duty of every one 
was gradually delegated to particular individuals. In 
this stage we find certain customs enforced, no longer by 
pure democracy and simple lynch law, but by some more 
organized system of government, however imperfect or 
arbitrary. In the next stage of development we find not 
merely a determinate set of ofiicials to secure compliance 
with certain customs of the tribe, but a definite procedure 
by which this compliance is attained. In the oldest sys- 
tems or codes of law nothing is more noticeable than 
the disproportionate space which is given to procedure. 
These codes aun to state the method of obtaining redress 
for a wrong, rather than the nature and content of the 
right whose infraction constitutes a wrong.^ The law, to 
put the matter in modern terms, was adjective before it 
was substantive. The definition of the means of getting 
one's legal rights was antecedent to the definition to 
those rights themselves. The third and final step to- 
ward the formation of law in its modern sense was taken 
when the authorities, charged mth the duty of enforcing 
the various rights and customs, began to state definitely 
which rights and customs would be enforced by them as 
political ofiicers, and which rights and customs would be 
left as a residumn, if one may so put it, for the authority 
of the church or of reason, of rehgion or of ethics. In 
this stage we have a gradual process of separation of cer- 
tain principles whose infraction would be punished by 
the organized force of the community, from the remain- 
ing body of customs for whose violation the remedies 
were less determinate and the procedure wholly indeter- 
minate. The authority of tliis residuum rested primarily 
on the feehngs of the tribe or nation rather than on any 
particular set of public ofiicers. 

1 The Twelve Tables furnish a good instance. 
109 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

In any growing legal system we find this gradual pro- 
cess of definition, by which matters, previously left to 
one general conscience and reason, are made determinate 
parts of the law. Perhaps the best known instances 
are to be found in the prsetorian jurisdiction in Rome 
and the equity jurisdiction in England, — two things 
which have a close analogy with one another. The prse- 
tor at Rome was a public officer with authority to sup- 
plement, by his decisions, the law of the Twelve Tables 
in cases where that law was not sufiiciently explicit, or 
where its direct apphcation would work hardship. He 
decided what was equitable by liis own common sense ; 
and this, when matters were simple, was likely to be 
pretty nearly the common sense of the more educated 
part of the community. But, inasmuch as one praetor 
might differ from another in his views of equity, it be- 
came a matter of great importance for people to know 
how this undetermined part of the law was going to be 
administered. To meet this necessity the praetor, upon 
taking office, would issue an edict, stating what he would 
do in certain cases which were likely to arise. With 
each successive election the forms of this edict became 
more and more stereotyped; and in the more highly 
developed stage of Roman law each prsetor would begin 
by stating that he would uphold the same traditions that 
his predecessors had upheld, and would then perhaps 
add a few new provisions to meet new difficulties that 
might arise. What had been at first left to the prsetor's 
moral sense was gradually systematized, until it ulti- 
mately became as expHcit as the older system which it 
had supplemented. The same history was repeated in 
the equity jurisdiction of England, and it seems likely 
to repeat itself in another form in the jurisdiction of 
bodies like the Interstate Commerce Commission in the 

110 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

United States, — bodies which in theory have not the 
character or authority of courts, but which are designed 
to give voice to the intelHgent sense of the community 
on matters at first thought to be extra-legal. The deci- 
sions of such a commission, though not law in the tech- 
nical sense, may gradually come to have the force of law 
and to be recognized as such.^ All these things are but 
instances of a general process of formulation of succes- 
sive parts of what had previously been morals rather 
than law. There has been, in other words, a continual 
and progressive separation of those things which the 
courts will enforce and for whose infraction determinate 
remedies are provided, from those things whose enforce- 
ment must be left to the sense of the community at 
large. 

Law, in this view, is created by a gradual delegation 
of certain parts of morals to the political authorities for 
enforcement. But it must not be supposed that the 
residuum could remain unchanged while this process 
was going on. The moral system was developed and 
altered in its character as constantly as the law itself. 
The separation and definition of those rights whose 
infraction was punished by the government could not 

^ The work of courts of equity may seem to be radically different from 
that of commissions in two respects : first, that such courts had power to 
execute their decrees, while commissions have not ; and second, that courts 
of equity applied the moral sentiment of the community to remedy clear 
cases of injustice, while commissions apply abstruse reasoning to the ex- 
planation of complex ones. The difference is in either case more appar- 
ent than real. A purely advisory body, under the settled legal system 
of to-day, may have as much power as a court of equity in past centuries, 
whether for the enforcement of rights or for the creation of precedents. 
And the morality of the present day is so distinctively rational that a 
new exposition of the effects of certain lines of action to-day may repre- 
sent moral force just as clearly as did a new application of moral senti- 
ments five hundred years ago. 

Ill 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

possibly come to pass without radically affecting the 
spirit of the remainder. So long as pubhc authorities 
could give remedies for only a few among the many 
evils under which we suffered, so long must right- 
minded men do their own fighting. The vigilance com- 
mittees of the frontier towns or the rough codes of 
morals of school boys bring this state of things before 
our sight in the midst of the existing civilization. But 
with the addition of each new domain which law con- 
quers for itself, the necessity for extra-legal force grows 
less and less. The law-abiding spirit grows with the 
growth of civilization, not because people are more 
ready to submit to insult, but because they have new 
means of seeking redress. The case of duelling is a last 
remnant left from the tune when law and morals were 
not defined, and when large groups of offences lay on 
the border-land between the two ; where the combatants 
sought a remedy in extra-legal force, rather than in the 
courts on the one hand, or in public opinion on the 
other. Where duelling prevails to a large extent, it is 
notoriously impossible for modern conceptions of law 
to hold good ; and, what is still more to our present pur- 
pose, it is equally impossible for modern conceptions 
of morals to hold good. 

There is a story that an Eton head master who ha- 
bitually rehed on the use of the rod, once expounded 
Scripture as follows : " ' Blessed are the pure in heart.' 
Mind that, boys. The Bible says it 's your duty to be 
pure in heart. If you are not pure in heart I '11 flog 
you." To modern ideas the absurdity of the story lies 
in the supposition that the domain of morals can be 
narrowed down to the limits of the master's rod ; but 
to the ancient mind there would have been no such 
absurdity whatsoever. To our ancestors of three thou- 

112 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

sand years ago it would have seemed unreasonable to 
suppose that any precept could have much force unless 
it had the power of physical compulsion behind it. 
When law and morals were indistinguishable, the 
domain of moral precepts was coextensive with that 
of judicial ones. The community appears to have re- 
quired of its members conformity to certain definite cus- 
toms, and to have punished with indiscriminate severity 
all violations of any such customs. For every offence 
there was a religious penalty threatened against the 
whole tribe that permitted it, and swift physical ven- 
geance was executed by that tribe on the offending 
member, by whose action its well-being was thus endan- 
gered. But when determinate remedies were provided 
for certain violations of law, the duty of physical pun- 
ishment was delegated to the government; and the 
people were led to lay more stress on the religious 
or ethical sanctions for those precepts to which the 
sovereign could not in the nature of things secure 
obedience by physical force. The moment this separa- 
tion was made, it opened the possibihty of widening 
the field of moral authority. Public opinion was not 
forced to limit its precepts to those matters where its 
violation could be instantly punished. It learned to 
depend for its power in no small measure upon the 
superstitions or the reasonings of the individual mem- 
bers of the community. When conscience and the 
police were undistinguished, the sphere of the authority 
of conscience was very different from what it became 
when the two were separated. The people that relies 
on its conscience as a means of enforcing public senti- 
ment, and is able to maintain that authority stoutly 
and strongly, can do hundreds of things impossible to 
the tribe which can conceive of no law except one whose 
8 113 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

infractions are repressed by violence. The history of 
this development of moral authority, though less often 
formulated than the history of law, seems hardly less 
clear. In the rudest stages of society concerning which 
we can secure evidence, the authority behind the moral 
law seems to have been the fear of an undefined and 
vague supernatural power, — magic pure and simple. 
As society advances a little, a more personal shape is 
attributed to these powers. To this stage belongs the 
development of tribal and family religion, of the idea of 
association of gods with men, of collective tribal respon- 
sibility, and of the honorific sacrifice, — the symbol, not 
of expiation, but of brotherhood with the gods of the 
tribe. In the period next following this the idea of sin 
first makes its appearance. A crime is no longer an 
offence against the gods of the tribe, involving all mem- 
bers of the tribe alike and punishable only by instant 
death, but an individual act which can, to some extent 
at any rate, be expiated. To tliis period belongs the 
idea of expiatory sacrifice or atonement; the sin offer- 
ing of the Old Testament, as distinguished from the 
thank offering. With the sin offering there develops 
a set of conceptions of infinite importance for modern 
ethics. Hawthorne's favorite idea of sin as an educator, 
however strained it may be in its application to indi- 
viduals, is a most fundamental truth as applied to 
nations. It is the germinating spot in the develop- 
ment of the modern conscience and the whole system 
of ideas connected with it. The conception of sin marks 
the beginning of moral responsibility. The community 
has ceased to judge the outward act alone, and takes 
into account, however crudely, the intention of the man 
who performed it. The conceptions of merit and free 
will have their origin at this point. Inexplicable and 

114 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

irrational 1 to the psychologist of to-day, whose view- 
point is bounded by individual consciousness, they pre- 
sent no difficulty whatever to the historian. Theories of 
free will and of merit had the clearest historical justifi- 
cation, because they were necessary elements in the de- 
velopment of individual responsibility, without which 
responsibility no progress from the oldest tribal system 
of morals was possible. 

During this stage sin was conceived as an individual 
personal offence against a supernatural power. Just as, 
under Oriental laws, any disregard of a despotic author- 
ity was punished or expiated, so sin was punished or 
expiated also. An act was regarded as sinful because it 
offended some god ; and that was the end of it. It was 
expiated in a certain way, because some god had pre- 
scribed of his own pleasure that particular form of ex- 
piation ; and that was the end of it also. The earliest 
systems of morals are almost purely ceremonial, just as 
the earhest systems of pohtical law are almost wholly 
occupied with procedure. But as a substantive civil 
law developed out of judicial procedure, so in a similar 
fashion a substantive moral law developed out of sacri- 

1 For example, T. H. Green (Philosophical Works, II, 319) speaks of 
the free-will difficulty as a " question to which there is no answer because 
expressed in terms which implj/ that there is some agency beyond the irill 
which determines what that will should be." Schopenhauer, though he at 
times comes very near to the historical method of treatment, ends by 
wholly missing it. " Jedes einzelne Act hat einen Zweck, das gesammte 
Wollen keinen." ( Weltals Wille, I, 106.) But perhaps the most marked 
instance of failure to use historical methods in the treatment of this sub- 
ject is found in Leslie Stephen's Science of Ethics. His standards are 
historical, but his explanations are not; in other words, his psychology 
is not brought into line with his ethics. Instead of saying that the com- 
munity has taught free will to its members as a means of securing re- 
sponsibility, he apparently holds that each individual develops theories of 
free will as a result of his own uncertainty (p. 428 ; compare Schopenhauer, 
'der Begriff der Freilieit is eigentlich ein negativer"). 

115 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

ficial procedure. As this development progressed, the 
content of the moral law became more important, and 
the ceremonial at any rate relatively less so. The Mo- 
saic code marks a point where this moral law had already 
acquired large substance and stability. It is hardly nec- 
essary to add that such a development of moral codes 
necessitates a progress, partial or complete, towards 
monotheism. Under conflicting lawgivers there could 
not be one authoritative code. 

It is not long before we come to a transition from the 
stage where law derives its authority from God to one 
where God derives his authority from being a lawgiver. 
A community which formulates and obeys a set of moral 
laws knows God primarily as revealed in those laws. 
To a nation with a conscience the Gods of mythology 
give place to the God of righteousness. From this point 
it is but a short step to rationalism itself; to a time 
when men begin to judge God by his own laws. A 
people which had reached the stage of Jewish morals in 
the time of Nehemiah could not wait very long before 
developing the Pharisaic rationalism of the centuries 
before the Christian era. The obvious inequalities of 
justice that troubled them forced them to the doctrine 
of immortality as the only means by which the goodness 
of God could be vindicated, — not the vague immortal- 
ity of the tribal religions, but a system of immortal 
rewards and punishments, whereby the glaring injustice 
of this world should be corrected in another. 

With each successive stage of progress, the authority 
of fear becomes less and less a determining factor in 
conduct, the authority of conscience and reason a larger 
one. It is no wonder that as moral conceptions widened 
and were separated from purely legal ones, people be- 
lieved this separation to be more fundamental than it 

116 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

really was. The most astute reasoners, concerning law 
and concerning conscience alike, mistook the exponent 
of political or moral law for its ultimate source; mis- 
took the authority on which the community relies for 
the execution of a judgment for the final power which 
hes behind that judgment itself. It is no wonder that 
systems of jurisprudence and ethics were formulated 
which reasoned thus: "If whatever the courts say is 
law, the courts can say anything, and it will be law. 
If whatever the conscience says is morally right, the 
conscience can say anything, and it will be morally 
right." But the conclusion is in each case wholly 
wrong. Neither the court nor the conscience has the 
free will or independence here supposed. The form in 
which the court exercises authority and the form in 
which the conscience exercises authority are fixed by 
the past history of the community. The courts camiot 
declare themselves independent of precedent and work 
out a new line of decisions apart from the moral sense 
of the people and the traditions which have guided it. 
The individual conscience cannot work out a new line 
of judgments and a new system of right and wrong apart 
from the traditions under which our ideas of law have 
grown up. Behind the courts, behind the legislatures, 
behind the church, behind the conscience, there is some- 
thing larger and wider which has developed in the 
progress of centuries, and which fuids its embodiment in 
national law and national character. 



II 

In a meeting between two armies, both strong, brave 
and well equipped, the issue of the contest is usually 
decided by superiority of discipline. That army which 

117 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

can best obey the general's orders, which is most fully 
trained to act in effective masses, and which has most 
thoroughly merged the individuality of the citizen in 
the self-devotion of the soldier, is reasonably sure to 
win. But though the question of discipline seems to 
decide almost everything, there is more than this behind 
it. The highest and best of modern armies must have 
something better than mere disciphne. With each gain 
in the range of weapons, each gain in the numbers 
handled, each gain in the complexity of the tactics, the 
necessity for this additional something makes itself more 
imperatively felt. Between forces otherwise equal, the 
decision will rest in favor of the one where individual 
thought and individual responsibihty permeate the col- 
lective thought and the machine-like precision with 
which the orders are obeyed. As between the re- 
publicans and the imperiahsts in the campaigns at the 
close of the eighteenth century, as between the Germans 
and the French at Worth or Mars-la-Tour, the issue was 
not decided by numbers alone, by discipline alone, or 
by generalship alone ; but by the possibility of seizing 
unexpected advantages of ground, detailed points of supe- 
riority not foreseen in the plan of the battle or con- 
templated in the general orders, for which one army was 
ready and the other was not. It is comparatively easy 
to train a body of soldiers to advance in column toward 
a perfectly well-defined object. It is harder to persuade 
a regiment or a group of regiments to advance in line 
without mechanical support behind them. It is hardest 
of all to teach the officers and the men of a company to 
advance individually. Yet at critical moments this last 
possibihty must decide the fate of the engagement. To- 
day more than ever before victory depends not upon 
intelligent generalship and impHcit obedience alone, but 

118 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

upon the independent activity of the company officers 
and the independent bravery of the men. 

And to-day more than ever before the superiority in 
morals rests with the nation that depends, not on its 
authority alone and not on its generals alone, but upon 
the individual responsibility of the subordinate leaders 
and upon the power of the men in the ranks to preserve 
their direction. In morals as in war we must have, in 
the first place, discipHne, authority, self-devotion, sub- 
ordination of the individual to the whole. Nothing will 
take the place of that spirit which enables and compels 
the soldier to march right straight to death for the sake 
of plain duty. But as the times are now, we must also 
have a power of the individuals to decide upon their duty 
for themselves; to see what needs to be done without 
orders, and to take their own chances in doing it. We 
must have our collective authority supplemented by in- 
dividual responsibility, individual judgment, and indi- 
vidual sense. 

Discipline and self-devotion are underlying principles 
of all ethics. The nation that does not have them goes 
to pieces irreparably. Judgment and sense are the dis- 
tinctive characteristics of modern etliics. The nation 
that does not have them is left behind in the race of 
historical progress. 

But is it possible to have a thorough exercise of judg- 
ment and sense without a loss of discipline and self- 
devotion? Will not the development of the one, in 
morals and in tactics, inevitably lead to the destruction 
of the other? Is not a man selfish as soon as he begins 
to reason out the consequences of his action? Is not 
all heroism impulsive heroism? Is not all calculated 
conduct in the last analysis selfish conduct? Can we 
have both the heroism and the calculation, the collective 

119 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

end and the individual judgment? We must not un- 
derrate the real difficulty which lies at the root of these 
questions. We must not overlook the fact that in the 
passage from centralized authority to individual liberty 
there is danger that the underlying discipline, absolutely 
essential to all, should pass away. It is the hardest 
problem that a nation has to face, thus to decentrahze 
its moral authority without at the same time losing it 
altogether. But by nations as well as by armies, this 
problem must be faced and solved. Under modern con- 
ditions, that nation which can farthest push its ration- 
alism without allowing it to degenerate into egoism — 
which can farthest push its individual freedom without 
losing its collective strength — is the one that must 
prevail in the long run, and the one whose moral system 
has in it the element of permanence. 

The old principle of tribal responsibility secured dis- 
cipline at the expense of independence. It secured 
effective authority over conduct, but it prevented such 
conduct from being rational, at least in any unforeseen 
emergencies. It secured comphance with the letter of 
the moral law, and sacrificed its spirit — if, indeed, in 
those rude days, it can be said to have had a spirit. The 
substitution of individual responsibihty for collective 
responsibility, the development of the conception of sin 
and of merit, and, above all, the recognition of intention 
as an important element in morality, made a radical 
change in this respect. People were taught to assume 
the existence of a choice between good and bad conduct, 
and to use their reason in directing their conduct to 
more or less rational ends. This freedom — or perhaps 
we should say this assumption of freedom — made it 
necessary for standards of conduct to become either 
much better or much worse than they had been pre- 

120 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

viously. If the standard of the community, under the 
new system, remained unselfish and far-sighted, the use 
of freedom and intelligence was a clear gain ; if on the 
other hand the first use of freedom was to overthrow 
discipline and unselfisliness, the gain was many times 
outweighed by the loss. The attempt to substitute 
moral responsibility for moral compulsion was like the 
attempt to substitute free labor for slave labor. If the 
freeman would work at all, their work was better than 
that of slaves ; but there was always a danger that they 
would use their freedom as a pretext for doing no work 
whatsoever.^ 

When it was believed that the gods punished the 
tribe for the sins of its members, this belief was not only 
effective in practice but substantially true in theory,^ 
But when the priests attempted to modify this behef 
to suit the development of individual responsibility, and 
taught that the gods punished the individuals for their 
o^vn sins, the formula lost so much of its truth as to 
lose nearly all of its effectiveness. That the gods 
always rewarded the good man and punished the bad 
man, was not true, in this life at any rate. The future 
life might set matters right; devout men, in aU ages, 
beUeved that it would; but the future life was not 
a strong enough motive to make the bulk of the com- 
munity moral. Its remoteness rendered it ineffective 
with one class of minds, its uncertainty \vith another 
class. On the races of antiquity, the general effect 

1 In actual history, fatalism has gone hand in hand with slavery, 
rationalism with property. The troubles of Greece in developing ra- 
tionalism side by side with slavery, and those of Russia in developing 
emancipation side by side with fatalism, show the difficulty if not the im- 
possibility of ignoriug the connection. 

2 The belief differs from Darwinism only in the process by which it is 
reached and the form in which it is stated ; not in the substance itself. 

12J 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

of reasoning about conduct was distinctly demoralizing. 
The Athenian public was substantially right in its 
estimate of the work of Socrates as affecting social order 
at Athens. The course of events proved the truth of 
the pubUc judgment; and indeed the successors of 
Socrates, by the form which they gave their philosophy, 
vitually confessed the correctness of this judgment. 
For the loss of popular belief in the gods, they offered 
nothing which could serve as a substitute. They might 
talk of the honestum and the utile and the interaction 
between the two, and show that nothing could be useful 
or advantageous which was not honorable and rational; 
but they got astonishingly httle hold on the masses of 
mankind. Rationahsm, to those tribes that had been 
brought up under the older mythologies, meant self- 
ishness; selfishness meant disruption of all authority, 
followed by revolutions and barbarian invasions. Those 
who had any effective moral restraint left when their 
mythology was gone, were very few in number. Plato, 
and nearly all his contemporaries and successors, were 
careful to restrict the study of ethics to the favored 
class of citizens who would get the most benefit from 
the development of the state, and who could therefore 
take this collective development as an end. Wise under- 
standing of justice was to be the prerogative of a few 
philosophers and statesmen who were to be maintained 
by the rest of the community. Courage was to be the 
distinctive virtue of the soldiers who were to carry out 
the decrees of the philosophers and statesmen. As for 
the rest, let them practise self-restraint, let them learn 
to mind their own business. This was the sum and 
substance of ancient philosophy ; authority over the 
many, collective egoism, if we may so call it, for the 
few. But we all know how it turned out, — that 

122 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

the many would not be thus repressed ; would not mind 
their own business ; would insist that if it was useful to 
the community for Socrates to drink all night, it was 
also useful to the conununity for the " base mechanicals " 
to drink all night ; and the Macedonians came in and 
conquered. 

The Romans did somewhat better with their rational- 
ism ; for the Romans had what the Greeks had not, 
a well-developed system of legal ideas, and certain liabits 
of action and feehng which carried the influence of 
those ideas beyond the narrower sphere of law. When 
their mythology went away there was something left 
besides pliilosophy. The ideas of this period are em- 
bodied in the great work of Lucretius, De Rerwn 
Natura — in some respects the most modern poem of 
classical antiquity. It reflects the state of mind of one 
who attempted to be seriously and soberly a rationahst 
and at the same time a reverencer of authority. It 
reflects the hopeless conflict between the old morality 
founded upon a mythology which the author could no 
longer beheve, and the new morality founded on Grecian 
philosophy wliich offered relatively weak motives for 
good conduct. The two could not be reconciled ; yet 
the hard effort at reconciliation still continued, and 
by its persistence showed a vitality in Roman morals 
and Roman religion and a possibility of development in 
Roman thinking which the Greeks, with all their acute- 
ness, had failed to attain. It siiowed a possibihty of 
maintaining some of the discipline of the old Rome 
with some of the freedom of the newer philosophi- 
cal thought. To understand this state of things more 
clearly we have only to look at the New England 
thought and New England feeling of the last hundred 
years. How many men have we known whose minds 

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THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

were in a hopeless conflict between two duties that they 
saw and felt, — the duty of believing in the authority 
of the traditional religion on the one hand, and the duty 
of exercising their sense independently and fearlessly on 
the other. How many persons have been clouded by 
despondency in the hopeless attempt to reconcile these 
two co-ordinate obligations, to follow traditions which 
their sense could not accept, and to use their sense to an 
extent which must burst the bonds of old traditions. 
How many times in New England history has the 
experience of Lucretius been repeated ; and how many 
men who could not put it into poetry have put into 
action the despair of the conflict which breathes through 
the hues of his verse. 

Wherever this conflict persists — wherever the con- 
servatism of feeling among the best men of the nation is 
not swept away by the flood of rationaUsm — we have 
a field for the work of religious reformers, and for the 
new systems of ethical ideas incident to such reform. 
It is extremely difficult to find words to indicate the 
nature of this work and this change of ideas, or to 
characterize, without risk of misunderstanding, the com- 
mon element in the influence of Buddlia and Confucius 
and Mahomet and Jesus. We are hampered by a psy- 
chology which treats the individual as self-determined ; 
by crude theories of inspiration, and yet cruder theories 
of reason and reality, which have prevented the develop- 
ment of a terminology to suit the needs of the case. 
The religious reformer, in distinction from the philoso- 
pher, appeals primarily to the emotions rather than to 
the reason of those whom he addresses. Perhaps it 
would be better to say that he appeals to unconscious 
reasoning (if we may do violence to psychological 
usage) rather than to conscious. He avoids the absurdi- 

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ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

ties of the older mythology so far as they have pre- 
vented that mythology from keeping a lasting hold upon 
the people ; he creates a new theology having its evi- 
dence and its warrant in the feelings and conduct of 
those who adopt it. It may be open to criticism on the 
narrow set of data accessible to contemporary philoso- 
phers, as early Christianity was open to the criticisms 
of Celsus ; but when Celsus claimed that Greek philoso- 
phy was better than Christianity, he overlooked the 
fact that Greek philosophy could not take hold of the 
masses of mankind and influence their conduct, while 
Christianity could ; and so in their several places could 
Confucianism and Buddliism and Mahometanism. It 
is one of the most important facts in any scientific 
study of psychology that in httle over a thousand years 
the whole civilized world could pass from the dominion 
of tribal mythologies, based on tribal war and tribal 
responsibility, to broader theologies, based on individual 
responsibihty, on moral sentiments, and on national if 
not on human brotherhood. 

Nowhere is the dilference between Christianity and 
tribal religions brought out more clearly than in the 
course of the rationahsm of modern Europe, as distinct 
from that of Greece or Rome. The process of religious 
criticism, which wrecked Greek piety and Greek morals 
in little over a century, has gone on for the last four hun- 
dred years without any such destruction. The active 
questionings which the ancients would have confined to 
a few philosophers are now the common property of the 
masses; yet those masses are probably on the whole 
more unselfish and more law-abiding than ever before. 
Though we cannot avoid anxiety for the future we have 
at least no cause to condemn the past. That which to 
the ancient world proved a speedy revolution has to the 

125 



THE EDUCATION OP THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

modern world not yet lost its character of a reformation. 
The protestantism of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies has paved the way for the utilitarianism of the 
eighteenth and the materialism of the nineteenth, with- 
out the downfall either of social order or of practical 
morality. 

The leading conditions which distinguished the ration- 
alism and the ethical development of the last four cen- 
turies from those of the ancient world fall under three 
heads : the separation of law and morals which made it 
possible to change the theories of conduct without dis- 
solving the foundations of social order; the institution 
of private property, which had trained people to work 
for a remote end intelligently and without compulsion ; 
and the feehng of sympathy and human brotherhood 
which found so large a place in the Christian doctrine 
that it withstood alike the perversions of that doctrine 
and the attacks which attempted to undermine its 
influence. 

Where moral authority and legal authority were but 
slightly distinguished, any change in the one was sure 
to endanger the other. But when the two stood apart 
in men's minds we could alter our theories of conduct 
without wrecking the whole structure of civil society. 
It was owing to the separation of legal and moral ideas 
that the work of Luther could stand, independently of 
that of Gotz von Berlichingen. Protestantism could 
appeal to the masses without making its success or fail- 
ure dependent on the success or failure of the Peasants' 
War, and without causing the excesses of the fanatics 
of Miinster to be paralleled in every town that rejected 
the old faith. The separation of church and state, in 
short, allowed the defenders of social order to range 
themselves on the side of moral progress. 

126 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

Of no less importance for rational conduct was the 
institution of private property and the training which it 
had given. Property taught people to do disagreeable 
things for a remote reward, and thus made them more 
capable of directing their efforts toward a distant 
moral end. It prevented freedom from degenerating 
into inefficiency and vice. It also did far more than 
this in a wholly different direction. It taught people to 
see in how many ways their own interests were to be 
sought in promoting those of others. When trade was 
thought to be a kind of robbery, there was no sin more 
unsparingly condemned than the desire to make money. 
But as tune went on, it appeared that legitunate trade 
was not robbery but mutual service ; that a man could 
habitually do well for himself by doing well for others ; 
and that where the superficial observer saw only a con- 
flict of interests, the really far-sighted business man 
could find a mutual harmony. It taught men, in other 
words, how often rational self-interest and rational 
unselfishness might closely coincide. 

But the most vital point of advantage of modern 
rationahsm lay in the existence of a kind of unselfish- 
ness which Christianity had been the chief agent in 
creating. This unselfishness was a feeling to which the 
moralist could appeal, either as a source of individual 
action, or as a basis of public sentiment. The church, 
in building it up, had paved the way for its own 
reformation. It was tliis feehng which gave power to 
the Protestant appeal to the Scriptures, because it 
enabled them to awaken a quick echo in the hearts of 
their readers. It was this which caused those Scriptures 
to be interpreted more and more by the fight of reason, 
until Christian morality became at last frankly utilita- 
rian, making happiness a standard of right. So univer- 

127 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

sal has been the tendency to accept this standard, even 
where the theology under which it had grown up was 
more or less completely lost, that philosophers of the 
most divergent schools, like Kant and Mill, have not 
hesitated to treat it as a self-evident ethical principle. 
But the course of events in the last few years is 
beginning to show that it is not thus self-evident. 
Utilitarianism, as a habitual working hypothesis, is giv- 
ing place to rational egoism, both among philosophers 
and among the mass of mankind. This change brings 
us face to face with the dangers which proved too much 
for ancient morality and ancient freedom. We can no 
longer rest content with that philosophy wliich would 
treat altruistic happiness as a self-evident standard, and 
make such happiness the ultimate criterion of moral 
right. Such a theory of ethics is no better than the 
crude theories of law which prevailed a century ago. 
Nor can the effort of Spencer to strengthen utilitarian- 
ism, by showing that enlightened selfishness and enlight- 
ened unselfishness tend to coincide, be deemed a wholly 
successful one. It is chiefly significant as a confession 
of the popular hold which egoistic ethics has secured. 
It is not because utilitarianism coincides with egoism 
that we are to accept it ; but because utilitarianism as a 
habit of mind in the nation means liberty and progress, 
while egoism means destruction. Utilitarianism is to be 
defended historically, as the form in which organized 
society can permit and prescribe the exercise of private 
judgment without moral suicide. It derives its author- 
ity, not from general grounds of natural right, but from 
the fact that the community is preserved by the exercise 
of private judgment, and finds it best that this private 
judgment shall be based on utilitarian standards. These 
standards are not necessary moral elements in every 

128 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

moral system, as Mill would have assumed; but they 
are characteristic and distinctive elements in the liigher 
civilization and the higher morality of all the nations of 
America and Western Europe for the past hundred 
years. 

How comes it that this utilitarianism which has in 
modern times by common consent been made a standard 
of morals and a criterion for the exercise of private judg- 
ment was all but unknown to the world of classical an- 
tiquity ? It was because the rehgions of the Greeks and 
Romans had not educated them, either as individuals or 
as nations, up to a point where sympathy became a com- 
mon feeling and an admissible assumption. Just as in 
constitutional law the possibiUty of liberty is dependent 
upon a law-abiding spirit in the community, upon a legal 
education which permits the exercise of individual re- 
sponsibility, — so in the case of morals, the possibiUty 
of private judgment is dependent upon a spirit of sym- 
pathy in the masses of mankind, whose historical devel- 
opment is due to Christianity. Proclaim liberty on the 
South Sea Islands, and the inhabitants will run amuck. 
Proclaim private judgment to a band of robbers, and 
they will at once exercise it in a manner which the com- 
munity could not tolerate for a moment. Civil freedom 
is dependent upon the legal education of those who hold 
it ; freedom of judgment, in like manner, upon the moral 
education of those who hold it. Modern America and 
modern Europe have been able to carry private judg- 
ment further than has ever been done before, without 
loosening the bonds of cohesion of society, because 
modern America and modern Europe work on the basis 
of such previous religious training that utihtarianism 
can be taken as a common standard and as an almost 
self-evident motive on which mankind can agree. Under 
» 129 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

a religion whicli preached only law and not love, only 
power and not altruism, as did so many of the ancient 
mythologies, the exercise of private judgment meant 
anarchy and destruction. A few, like the Stoics, could 
conceive of a general or collective utility ; more, like the 
Epicureans, could develop a rational egoism and at least 
make some effort to practise it ; but to the great majority 
of those educated under the older religions, the failure 
of these religions meant the substitution of an irrational 
egoism. It is because we have this historical basis of 
sympathy on which to work, that we can develop liberty 
of judgment in morals as we have developed liberty of 
action in law. It is thus that, with the fall of so many 
of the older moral sanctions, the whole system, though 
endangered in the apprehensions of the more conserva- 
tive, has not fallen, and still shows vigor and strength. 
In the Christian precept of love, and in the education 
which that precept has given, we still have something 
wliich can take hold on the hearts of mankind ; some- 
thing which can enable them to exercise their judgment 
without making that judgment entirely selfish, or losing 
it in the hopeless maze of philosophical discussion. It 
gives them something to work for and to fight for, which 
still appeals to their sympathies; something more tan- 
gible than the social utility of the Stoics or of Leshe 
Stephen. It enables the moral battle to break up into 
regiments and companies and skirmish lines, without 
cowardly retreat or short-sighted self-seeking. If our 
minds have been educated to feel the happiness of others 
as a strong motive, we need not make shipwreck be- 
tween the vagueness of the Stoic's ideal on the one hand, 
and the demoralization which has attended that of the 
Epicurean on the other. We have something suffi- 
ciently strong and tangible to appeal to the mass of 

130 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

mankind, sufficiently rational to be made a basis of indi- 
vidual responsibility and individual judgment, and in 
virtue of both these quahties bound to stand where other 
systems fall. 

But, the rational egoist will object, is not all reasoned 
action selfish action? Are not all motives selfish? 
When you calculate the results of a course of conduct, 
do you not in fact present the different motives as they 
appear to you, and choose the strongest of them ? And 
if you apparently choose an unselfish motive, is it not 
that you have been so trained that your own individual 
happiness is affected by the feelings of others ? This is 
an argument which has overwhelming weight with many ; 
an argument wliich has deceived, to a greater or less ex- 
tent, almost every thinker who has approached this sub- 
ject as a pure matter of individual psychology and has 
not looked at it from the wider standpoint of the sociolo- 
gist. But if this reasoning is sound it proves too much. 
If a man always obeys the strongest motive, this strong- 
est motive being determined by Iris own happiness at the 
instant, it is liis own happiness at the instant which 
affects his action and nothing else.^ The reasoning of 
the rational egoist destroys his own theories of morals 
as well as those of the altruist ; for it makes far-sighted 
conduct as illusory as unselfish conduct. In a certain 
sense it is true that every man is always affected by his 
own happiness at the instant ; but it is also true that his 
happiness at the instant can be affected by other people's 
happiness, just as much as it could be by his own happi- 
ness at some future instant. The claim of the rational 
egoist, that all motives are, in the last analysis, selfish, 

1 Strength of motive and quantity of happiness are as incommensur- 
able as a linear mile and an acre. Strength of motive is a matter of pur» 
intensity; quantity of happiness involves both intensity and duration. 

131 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

would only be practically true of a community in which 
self-consciousness was developed to an enormous degree 
and sympathy not at all ; but such a community would 
have gone to pieces long before there was any time for 
it to apply the finer theories of rational egoism. 

It is probably true that as civilization advances the 
conflict between rational egoism and rational altruism 
grows less and less. To a savage untrained in habits of 
law or of sympathy or of reasoning, the antithesis be- 
tween selfishness and unselfishness is an absolutely 
irreconcilable one. Develop him to a higher level of 
education, and they become less and less antagonistic. 
Let him be thoroughly trained, a man of fine sympatliies 
and far-sighted judgment, and he will see as a matter 
of reason that we are members one of another ; will see 
that by pursuing selfishly his own course to the dis- 
regard of others he would do as the individual soldier 
would do, who should selfishly pursue his safety by 
running away in the battle, — would injure his own 
safety as well as the safety of the whole army and the 
general issue of the conflict. He will see that only by 
helping one another can we intelligently carry out the 
system which should help ourselves. 

But we must beware of relying too implicitly on this 
harmony of interests. Such rationalism and such fore- 
sight, for the majority of people at any rate, are far re- 
mote ; and the danger inherent in rational egoism is that 
it will make them put the selfish reasoning in advance 
of the clear vision and high education which alone can 
make such reasoning innocuous. It is this which gives 
force to the famous passage of Burke, that many men of 
thought prefer to preserve ancient prejudices, rather than 
to trust everything to reason, lest haply short-sighted 
reasoning should destroy all things and wreck the whole 

132 



ETHICS AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE 

nation itself. It may be true that intelligent selfishness 
and intelligent unselfishness tend to come closer and 
closer to one another and may ultimately coincide. Yet, 
with human institutions as they are now, the connection 
is not always clear; and with human foresight and 
human intelligence as it is now, there is not one man in 
a thousand, perhaps not one man in a million, that can 
trust his intelligence to take the place of unselfishness. 
There may come a time when the whole community will 
see that rational conduct means readiness for self-devo- 
tion ; but this time has not yet arrived. For the present 
we must not rely wholly or primarily on rationahsm, but 
largely on tradition and feeling. It is the force of per- 
sonal love and personal magnetism and the various un- 
selfish impulses which tend to keep men together, that 
is strong enough to be made the basis of a moral author- 
ity by which the community can Uve. 

The really serious danger which we have to fear is, 
that by too quick development of a system of rational 
egoism as the ultimate aim of morals, we may expose 
ourselves to the fate by which Greece and Rome fell, 
and from which we, by our Christian traditions, have 
thus far been able to save ourselves. The importance 
of a sound science of ethics lies in the fact that it mil 
enable our minds and our consciences to work together 
instead of separately. It may be true, as Leslie Stephen 
says, that a theory of motives is not itself a motive. 
But it is one of those truths which are more than half 
untrue; for it is unquestionable that the absence of a 
theory of motives tends to weaken, on the part of the 
individual and the community, those motives which are 
left unexplained. If in our own secret hearts we cannot 
find logical grounds for those feelings of unselfishness 
in which we have been trained, and those acts of self- 

133 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

sacrifice to which we have become habituated, or if we 
are afraid to analyze our grounds too closely lest haply 
the test may prove too much for them, it is inevitable 
that these feelings should grow weaker, these acts less 
automatic. What is of even more importance, we must 
transmit them weaker to those about us and to those 
after us. If the community will save itself from the 
destruction of the rational egoist, it must find a rational 
theory that is not egoistic. It is this which makes the 
application of the methods of political science to morals 
most imperatively necessary. The effect of no small 
part of the psychology of the present day is immoral, 
because the science is based upon an assumption which 
is immoral in many of its practical effects, — the assump- 
tion of independent workings of individual minds. Only 
when we analyze the conduct and character of individuals 
as part of the general history of a race, only when we 
cease to take superficial phenomena of consciousness as 
ultimate data of science, only when we have learned to 
explain private judgment in morals as we explain consti- 
tutional liberty in politics, can we hope to understand 
either our own conduct or the conduct of nations. 



134 



POLITICAL EDUCATION 

Among the many demands which are made upon our 
schools and colleges at the present day, none is more 
universally voiced than the demand for a fuller course 
of poHtical education. And for this there is good rea- 
son. With the growing complexity of modern hfe, the 
difficulties of social organization and government are in- 
creasing. With the growing pressure toward speciahzed 
training for varied spheres of usefulness, the danger that 
we shall sacrifice the general basis of higher education 
which will enable us to cope with these difficulties is 
also increasing. It is not enough for our schools to fitl? 
men and women to be parts of a vast social machine ; it 
must prepare them to be citizens of a free common- 
wealth. If our educational system fails to do this, it\| 
fails of its fundamental object. 

But in thus recognizing the importance of training 
for citizenship, there is danger that we shall make mis- 
takes as to the particular kind of training which will 
secure the results desired. A true political education 
is a very different thing from much that passes current 
under this title. To begin with, it is not a study of 
facts about civil government. A man may possess a 
vast knowledge with regard to the workings of our 
social and political machinery, and yet be absolutely 
untrained in those things which make a good citizen. 
This distinction is of special importance at the present 

135 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

day, because these topics have so large a place in many 
of the schemes of education which are now being urged 
by social reformers. We hear on every side calls for 
more teaching of sociology and politics and civics and 
finance, and all manner of studies intended to inform 
the young American concerning the mechanism of the 
political world in which he lives. I shall not undertake 
to judge the value of these studies from the pedagogical 
standpoint. I shall not try to estimate whether the un- 
doubted advantage which they possess in awakening 
interest is more than balanced or less than balanced by 
the danger of cramming which connects itself with their 
use. But when the plea is urged, as it so often is, that 
they constitute a necessary and valuable training for 
citizenship, we are justified in making a direct protest. 
Except within the narrowest limits, they do harm rather 
' than good. As ordinarily taught, they tencT'to fix the 
attention of the pupil on the mechanism of free govern- 
ment rather than on its underlying principles. They 
exaggerate the tendency, which is too strong at best, 
toward laying stress on institutions rather than on 
character as a means of social salvation. They tend 
to prepare the minds of the next generation to look to 
superficial remedies for political evils, instead of seeing 
that the only true remedy lies in the creation of a sound 
public sentiment. I would not underrate the value of 
knowledge of political fact to the man or woman who 
is first well grounded in political ideals. But the en- 
deavor to cram mth facts as a substitute for the de- 
velopment of ideals is at best an inversion of the true 
order of education, and may easily become a perversion 
of its true purpose. For the sake of a plentiful and im- 
mediate crop of that mixture of wheat and chaff which 
is kno^\^l as civics, we run the risk of unfitting the soil 

136 



POLITICAL EDUCATION 

for the reception of that seed which should result in 
the soundest and best gro\vth of which the field is 
capable. 

Nor is it right to conceive of political education as 
being primarily a training in those scientific principles 
which regulate tiie activity of govermnents. It is true 
that the teaching of science is a far higher ideal than 
the teaching of facts, and that the pupil who has re- 
ceived tliis training enjoys a position of inestimable 
vantage in judging social events of the day. But it is 
also true that the study of political science is an ex- 
tremely difficult one; and that if we depended for the 
success of our poKtical education upon the truth of the 
abstract doctrines of politics which have been taught, 
the outlook would be dark indeed. One political sci- 
ence, and only one, has reached a high degree of ex- 
actitude. This is jurisprudence ; and just because it 
is an exact science, people have ceased to pretend that 
it is easy, and do not attempt to teach it in the schools. 
Next to jurisprudence in exactness comes poHtical econ- 
omy, certain parts of which have been developed in the 
hands of experts to a satisfactory stage of clearness and 
precision. But that which is taught as political economy 
in the majority of institutions is very far from having 
this scientific character. And what is true of the cur- 
rent teaching of political economy is, I think, true in 
even liigher degree of the various branches of sociology 
and politics, as they are presented in tlie classrooms of 
tlie present day. As a rule, the teaching of sociology 
is better when it is called by the plain name of history, 
the teaching of politics better when it is made an inci- 
dent in the unpretentious study of geography. Under 
the old-fashioned name of history or geography, the 
description of social phenomena arrogates to itself less 

137 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

claim as an exact science than its enthusiastic devotees 
desire. But the really essential elements in science are 
truthfulness and precision ; and I fear there can be no 
doubt that the substitution of the new names for the 
old has been accompanied by a loss in these respects. 
Next to an education in poHtical facts without ideals, 
I can imagine no worse training for the future citizen 
of the country than an education in political principles 
wdthout exactitude. 

It must constantly be borne in mind that the training 
of the free citizen is not so much a development of cer- 
tain lines of knowledge as a development of certain 
essential quahties of character and habits of action. 
Courage, discipline, and loftiness of purpose are the 
things really necessary for maintaining a free govern- 
ment. If a citizen possesses these qualities of charac- 
ter, he will acquire the knowledge which is essential 
to the conduct of the country's institutions, and to the 
reform of the abuses which may arise. If he does not 
possess these qualities, his political learning and that 
of his fellow-men will not keep the state from destruc- 
tion. If he has not the courage to exercise his political 
rights in the face of possible intunidation, no amount 
of acquaintance with constitutional theory will save his 
vote from suppression or prevent popular government 
from becoming a mere shadow. If he has not the 
discipline to subject his will to the restraints of law, 
no amount of knowledge of the beneficent effects of 
these restraints will save the people from that revo- 
lution and anarchy which invite tyranny from within 
or conquest from without. If he does not possess a 
measure of political idealism and disinterestedness of 
aim, no amount of knowledge of the needs of the coun- 
try and the ways of meeting them will lead to the for- 

138 



POLITICAL EDUCATION 

mation of an active public sentiment, or prevent the 
institutions of the nation from degenerating into a more 
and more rigid formahsm. 

If there is one thing which distinguishes the great 
writers on politics from the petty ones, it is the recog- 
nition of this overwhelming importance of character and 
pubhc opinion, as compared with the particular institu- 
tions in which that character and public opinion may 
choose to embody its organized activity. Unfortunately, 
their words on this matter do not always find ready 
hearing. The details of the organization are so much 
more visible than the underlying spirit which gives it 
life that everybody looks at the former, and few have 
the sense to see the latter. Every one knows that Aris- 
totle divided governments into monarchy, aristocracy, 
and democracy. Very few know that Aristotle said 
that there was a more fundamental division of govern- 
ments into those which were legitimate and those which 
were not ; the former being based on the consent of the 
governed and acting in the interest of the whole, while 
the latter were based on the authority of a class and 
exercised in the interests of that class. Every one 
knows that Rousseau's Social Contract was a powerful 
means for the promotion of democracy in Europe, and 
identifies his name with the doctrine that majorities 
should rule. Few know that Rousseau protested against 
the abuse of this doctrine with which his name is thus 
connected ; that he said emphatically that the majority 
of the people was not the people and never could be ; 
and that he only called for the determination of the 
public will by majority votes as being a better means 
than any other which had been devised of approxi- 
mating to that real public sentiment which, after all, 
was the only legitimate power. Let us not adopt a line 

139 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

of education whicli shall emphasize in the minds of our 
children those details which were trivial in Aristotle 
and those which were pernicious in Rousseau. Let us 
rather impress upon them their responsibility as mem- 
bers of a body politic in the formation of that sentiment 
running throughout the whole body, which is behind 
the laws of a free state, and without which all law 
becomes either a mockery or a means to the tyranny of 
some over others. 

But what is this public sentiment, about which so 
much is said and so little understood ? 

" Man," says Aristotle, " is a political animal." Many 
attempts have since been made to reinstate this propo- 
sition in an improved form, but on the whole none is so 
good as the original. The instinct for forming com- 
munities which shall be the unit and centre of action 
is a distinguishing mark of the human species. In the 
formation of these communities, the thing which holds 
them together and marks them out from those about 
them is not so much a distinction of physical character, 
or even of mental quahty, as a distinct system of politi- 
cal ethics. A man under the influence of this code of 
political ethics imposed by the community will do things 
which may seem to militate, and sometimes actually 
do miUtate, against his self-interest as an mdividual. 
Under its influence he will encounter personal danger 
to promote public safety. He will submit his passions 
and desires to the restraints of irksome discipline. 
Hardest of all, he will often perform disinterestedly as 
a trustee in behalf of the community those powers 
which the voice of that community has intrusted to his 
charge. 

On that feeling which gives effect to those pohtical 
virtues we have bestowed the name of public sentiment. 

140 



POLITICAL EDUCATION 

It may be said to perform the same functions in the 
world of political morality which the individual con- 
science performs in the wider domain of personal moral- 
ity. And just as codes of private morals are unmeaning 
or formal unless there is a sturdy conscience to give them 
effect, so legal regulations and police discipHne are but 
a vain reliance unless public sentiment stands behind 
them and comes to their aid. We may carry the anal- 
ogy one step further, and say that just as in private 
morahty there is an alternative between self-government 
by one's own conscience and the compulsion of external 
authority, so in public morahty there is a similar alter- 
native between self-government by public sentiment and 
the tyranny of a dominating power. 

It will be readily seen that public sentiment, as thus 
described, is a very different thing from much that 
passes under that name. If a large number of people 
want a tiling, we not infrequently hear it said that there 
is a public sentiment in its favor. It would be much 
more correct to say that there is a widespread personal 
interest in securing it. The tenn " pubUc sentiment " can 
only be applied to those feelings and demands which 
people are willing to enforce at their own cost, as well 
as that of others. The desire for better municipal 
government on the part of the man who is not willing 
to labor for that end, the effusive patriotism of the man 
who hopes thereby to lead other people to enter upon a 
war of which he may celebrate the glories and enjoy the 
fruits, the denunciation of trusts by the man who has 
tried to do what they do and has not succeeded, can 
never be regarded as expressions of public sentiment 
in any true sense. They are but instances of the self- 
ishness, the vaingloriousness, and the enviousness of 
large sections of the community. There is perhaps 

141 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

nothing which more severely cripples economic reform 
than a failure to distinguish between a disinterested 
condemnation of that which we should despise in our- 
selves no less unsparingly than we denounce it in others, 
and the interested outcry of those who object to an evil, 
real or alleged, simply because some one else happens 
to be its beneficiary. 

There is just as much need for the training of this 
public conscience or public sentiment, by whatever 
name we choose to call it, as for the training of the 
individual conscience in the affairs of private life. In 
fact, there is all the more need for such training, because 
the functions of the public conscience are less perfectly 
understood and the matters with which it deals are 
much more complex. In the practice of ordinary per- 
sonal virtues a man or woman cannot go far astray with- 
out being brought up with a round turn by social 
disqualification, if not by the police or the reformatory. 
But in matters which concern the public interest, the 
transgressor, under our present system, is often entirely 
safe from the condemnation of the law, and largely so 
from any active exercise of social disqualification on the 
part of his fellow-men. The greater the complexity of 
our social phenomena, the less clear are the applications 
of some of our standards of personal morality in their 
conduct, and the more does this education of public 
morality become an indispensable thing for the com- 
munity that would preserve its integrity. 

The means for this education have not kept pace with 
the need. In some respects we have actually gone back- 
ward. Grand as is the work which is done by the 
courts of the present day, it is doubtful whether their 
function as public educators stands where it did a cen- 
tury ago. Partly on account of the increasing dijB&culty 

142 



POLITICAL EDUCATION 

of the cases with which they have to deal, partly on 
account of a theory of legal authority which dates from 
the beginning of the present century, our judges have 
contented themselves more and more with the appUca- 
tion of precedents, and have been less and less con- 
cerned with the elucidation of reasons which should 
appeal to the non-technical mind. Add to this the fact 
that the performance of jury duty, once an all but uni- 
versal educator in the principles underlying some of the 
most important branches of the law, has now become a 
burden which men seek to avoid, and we see how the 
judiciary has been largely shorn of those educational 
functions which in the history of the human race have 
been even more important than the purely technical 
duties of the office. 

A still more serious retrogression has perhaps taken 
place in the educational influence of our pubhc orators 
and debaters. It is hardly more than a generation since 
the utterances of political leaders in and out of Congress 
were a mighty power for the shaping of public opinion. 
Callioun and Clay, Webster and Lincoln, formed by 
their speech the sentiment of large bodies of men on 
matters of public duty. We may differ in our judgment 
as to the rightness or wrongness of the conclusions 
which they drew. The man who agreed with Callioun 
will disagree with Lincoln. But, now that the clouds of 
strife have passed away, all can agree that Calhoun and 
Lincoln alike appealed to something higher than per- 
sonal interest, created something with more cohesive 
power than a mere enlightened selfishness, — that each, 
in short, was inspired by a lofty ideal of the public con- 
science, and helped the whole American people to real- 
ize that ideal. To-day, on the other hand, it is almost 
proverbial that the effective speeches are those which 

143 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

voice a prepossession already felt, and give a rallying cry 
to partisan or personal interests. The system of district 
representation has gone far to make legislation a series 
of compromises between the interests of the several parts 
concerned, rather than an attempt to meet the needs of 
the whole. So far as this change has taken place in our 
legislation, it has become inevitable that the debate by 
which such legislation is preceded should be not so much 
an attempt to discuss the interest of the whole and to 
subordinate thereto the interests of the several parts by 
an appeal to self-sacrifice, as a skilful conduct of a ne- 
gotiation where each speaker represents his sectional 
demands, which he strives to enforce by his superior 
adroitness as one among many players in the game of 
politics. 

It is a common saying, and on the whole a true one, 
that newspapers have taken the place of orators as the 
educators of public sentiment. That the change has 
been attended with some advantages, none but tlie blind- 
est pessimist would deny. The average citizen learns 
more facts through his newspapers in a day than he 
learned from his public speakers in a month. Materials 
for judgment are thus brought home to him far more 
promptly, and on the whole, I am inclined to think, 
rather more truthfully, than they were under the old 
regime. But whatever advantages the modern news- 
paper offers, it does not, with some honorable exceptions, 
recognize the duty of educating public sentiment as a 
paramount one. From the very circumstances of the 
case, the daily newspaper is under a strong pressure to 
emphasize what is ephemeral as compared with what is 
permanent ; to throw into high relief what is crude 
rather than what has been thoroughly digested ; to make 
more use of that which is sensational than of that which 

144 



POLITICAL EDUCATION 

is sedative. Too often it is compelled by pressure of 
necessity to subordinate everything else to partisan ends. 
Even where the editor himself has a high ideal of the 
possibihties of his vocation, he finds himself hindered by 
a lower conception of journalistic duty which prevails 
among the pubhc at large. Whatever the reason, and 
wherever the blame, we cannot rely on the average news- 
paper of the present day to furnish that training in dis- 
interestedness which is the essential basis of a really 
powerful public sentiment. 

All these facts increase the responsibility which is 
placed upon our institutions of learning. The more 
inadequate the means for forming a disinterested public 
opinion in other ways, the more urgent is the need that 
our colleges should make this one of their chief functions. 
It will not do to have our higher education a purely 
technical one. However completely the citizens of the 
next generation may be fitted for the exercise of their 
several callings, our Constitution will not be safe unless 
they are also trained in the principles wliich enable them 
to govern themselves and their fellow-men. 

It is an interesting thing to see how the higher educa- 
tion of different countries reflects in its organization and 
character the political institutions of the nations con- 
cerned. In France and in Germany, where the citizen is( 
part of a pubhc machine, university life is occupied with' 
an almost purely technical training, which fits each man 
for his place in that machine. In England and America, I 
on the other hand, where the citizen is regarded primarily 
as part of a governing body, we have had a system of 
college education less closely adapted to technical needs, 
but more efficient in the creation of public sentiment. 
England and America have a system of hberal education 
in a sense which France and Germany have not, — an 
10 145 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

education whose liberality consists not in the superior 
quantity of knowledge, but in the relation of that knowl- 
edge to civil Hberty. 

How shall our colleges continue to give the education 
which is liberal in this higher sense, — education in 
the virtues of the freeman as distinct from those of the 
slave ? In the answer to this question is bound up the 
whole future of the American college as an institution ; 
not only its form, but perhaps its very existence. 

Its course of study, in the first place, must deal with 
subjects which are non-professional. The student who 
begins at too early a period of his education to occupy 
himself with matters pertaining to the gaining of bread 
and butter is from that very fact in danger of losing sight 
of his broader privileges and duties as a citizen. The 
moral influence of having the student's mind fixed, dur- 
ing some of the most plastic years of his mental life, on 
things whose value is independent of their money-making 
power for him individually is a thing of incalculable 
value. 

In the second place, the course of study must deal 
with things which are permanent and not ephemeral. 
The man who would govern a nation and lead its pubhc 
sentiment must not be swayed by the misjudgments and 
distortions of the moment. There is no power which in 
the long run has more commanding influence over the 
people than the power of a strong man to adhere to fixed 
standards where weaker men are unbalanced and unset- 
tled by momentary confusion. It is this quality of per- 
manence, I believe, more than any other, which has given 
to classical literature its commanding place in the edu- 
cational systems of countries like England and America. 
I would not confine the term " classic " to the literatures 
of Greece and Rome ; but I would insist with confidence 

146 



POLITICAL EDUCATION 

that the education of free citizens should be grounded in 
the study of those works wliich have proved their great- 
ness, not by the appeal to a single generation or even to 
a single country, but by living long enough and spreading 
far enough to serve as a permanent basis of thought amid 
the shifting views and ideals of different communities. 

In the third place, it must deal mth large affairs 
rather than small ones. In some of our modern methods 
of work there is a real danger that this need may be dis- 
regarded. Controlled as our studies are by persons who 
see in every brilUant scholar a possible candidate for the 
degree of doctor of philosophy, there is a tendency in 
some quarters to substitute thoroughness and minute- 
ness of detail for breadth of view ; and to use, in those 
general studies which are intended to enlarge the mental 
horizon, methods of training which are more fit for those 
who would pursue them for technical purposes. It 
cannot be too strongly impressed on the teaching force 
of the country, in these days of speciahzation, that a 
hberal education has in view purposes different from 
those which control the specialist, and in some degree 
opposed to them. Original research, of wliich so much^ 
is said, is a valuable thing in its place ; but it will not) 
do to have the citizens of our republic regard the muck- 
rake as the chosen instrument of higher learning. I 
would not undervalue for one moment the unportance of 
hard and thorough work ; but unless our teachers can 
find methods of securing this work on broad lines instead 
of narrow ones, the collegiate education of the country, 
in its older sense, is bound to pass away, because it will 
no longer be fulfilling its distinctive function in the 
training of the citizen. 

But by no means the largest part of the education in 
public spirit which a college ought to give is to be sought 

U7 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

in its course of study. There is an equally important 
education given by the students to one another, and re- 
sulting from the spirit of the place. On this we must 
rely for the development of loyalty and self-devotion 
and those moral elements which are necessary as a basis 
of public sentiment in a self-governing community. This 
fact has an important bearing on the choice of studies 
to be taught in the college course. For the right selec- 
tion of studies attracts the right kind of student material. 
The school which is purely technical, which enables its 
graduates to get large salaries at the sacrifice of breadth 
of character, inevitably attracts, as the years go on, those 
persons to whom money-making is the prime object. 
The school whose course is crammed with things of 
momentary rather than of permanent interest attracts 
those persons who value the superficial or transitory 
rather than the profounder things of life. The school 
whose methods of instruction are microscopic rather 
than telescopic attracts the minds that are narrow instead 
of broad. But with a course of study arranged in- 
dependently of preparation for professional Hfe, dealing 
with the things of all time more than with the interests 
of the moment, and aiming to give all possible breadth 
of intellectual interest, we are reasonably sure of attract- 
ing a student body capable of educating one another 
in disinterestedness, in stability of purpose, and in that 
sense of proportion which goes with largeness of vision. 
Nor is the influence of such students confined to those 
who are immediately associated with them. A few suc- 
cessive classes of this kind can build up a system of tra- 
ditions and of sentiments which are hard to explain to 
those who have not come under their influence, but 
which, to those whose privilege it has been to feel their 
power, constitute the prof oundest element in the political 

148 



POLITICAL EDUCATION 

education furnished by a college course. This influence 
is not confined to any one department of college activity. 
It is manifested alike in the classroom, in the society, 
or on the playground. It carries those who feel it out- 
side of themselves, and makes them part of a college 
life whose freedom trains them for the freedom of the 
larger national life into which they are just entering. 
Taking our boys — and in the present generation our 
girls also — from different sections of the country, it 
makes them acquainted with their fellow men or women 
in a broader and more national sense than is possible 
in the secondary school, and under circumstances which 
contribute to the development of wider ideals than are 
possible in a system of technical training. May the 
time be far distant when these elements in our college 
life shall be crowded out by the pressure of professional 
studies, or weakened by schemes of education which lay 
more stress on the things which lie immediately before 
us as individuals than on those which fit us to be mem- 
bers of a free commonwealth and makers of the world's 
history ! 



149 



HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE PUBLIC 
WELFARE 

In these days of progress and reform, when no institu- 
tion is allowed to pass unchallenged, the higher educa- 
tional system of the country must be prepared to prove 
its usefulness if it would expect a continuance of pub- 
lic support. What does it do for the community ? Is 
it worth what it costs ? Which parts are most valuable ? 
These are questions wlhch must be squarely faced and 
satisfactorily answered. 

I think that there are three distinct ways in which 
higher education helps the community, and by which it 
proves its right to exist. First, it makes our people 
better workers in their several occupations. Second, it 
makes them better members of the body poHtic. Third, 
it makes them better men morally and spiritually. And 
I also believe that those good results of higher education 
which are least obvious and least easily measured in 
dollars and cents are the very ones which have most 
fundamental importance to the nation as a whole. 

How does education make a man a better worker in 
his profession ? Partly by teaching him to do in the 
school or the laboratory things which he would after- 
wards be compelled to learn more slowly in practical 
life, whether on the farm, in the shop, or in the office. 
This is what is known as technical training. Partly by 
teaching him, in his school or college days, theoretical 

150 



HIGHER EDUCATION AND PUBLIC WELFARE 

principles which in the experience of practical life he 
would not be likely to learn at all. This is the idea of 
scientific training. The distinction between the two 
ideals is a radical one. The former aims to save the 
tune of the student and to put hun as quickly as pos- 
sible into a position to do his work and make his money. 
The latter aims to increase the range of the student's 
conceptions, and to give him command of theories which 
will enable him to advance the methods of the business 
which he undertakes. 

The advantages of purely technical training are so 
obvious that very few people are blind to them. In 
fact, those who object most to the cost and the results 
of higher education as a whole are the very ones who 
wish the amount of technical training to be increased. 
" What is education for," they say, " if not to make a 
boy a worker and to save him the necessity of learning 
his trade after he leaves school ? " In spite of this fact, 
however, the general tendency of education in tliis 
country has been to become less technical and more 
scientific, — less occupied with exercise in details and 
more with teaching of ideas. A hundred years ago the 
young man who desired to enter a profession prepared 
himself in the ofiice of some lawyer or doctor, or in the 
study of some minister. There he learned the way in 
which tilings were done, — how to collect a note, to 
write a prescription, or to compose a sermon. When 
professional schools were established in connection with 
our universities, in the early years of this century, they 
at first aimed to do on a large scale just what individuals 
had been doing on a small scale. They tried to give 
instruction in the details of a man's life-work. But as 
time went on, it was found that they could do more good 
to their pupils in other ways. Not by telling the student 

151 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

how to do particular things could he be made a good 
lawyer or doctor, but by teaching him those principles 
of legal interpretation and of scientific physiology which 
should enable him really to understand the cases that 
might arise, and to use the books which bore upon those 
cases. A similar development, though less marked, has 
taken place in many of our best schools of technology. 
No longer are they places for shopwork, but places for 
the training of thinkers ; of men who may not know 
how to do the specific things which will first be wanted 
of them, but who are in possession of that general knowl- 
edge which will enable them to learn more thoroughly 
the real bearings of any new problem as it arises. They 
have become less technical and more scientific. 

The student who goes out of a school of the more 
modern type seems for the moment less well equipped 
than his rival who has studied in an office or in an old- 
fashioned school of the strictly technical character. He 
does not know the daily routine of the business. He 
cannot turn his hand and his tongue from one thing to 
another with the quickness which the technically edu- 
cated man possesses. But as time goes on this disad- 
vantage ceases; and soon the balance shows itself on 
the other side. For the man who has devoted his 
school life to the learning of details of office work or 
shop work soon finds that he has a great many things to 
unlearn. No college can anticipate accurately the con- 
ditions of actual practice. The man whose hand has 
been trained to meet one specific set of conditions is 
sometimes worse off than the man who has not been 
trained at all. Far better equipped is he whose educa- 
tion has been really scientific, and whose mind has been 
trained more fully than his hand. Has an important 
process been developed anywhere? His knowledge of 

152 



HIGHER EDUCATION AND PUBLIC WELFARE 

books, if it is worth anything, will enable him to find it 
out as soon as possible, and to understand it as fully as 
possible from descriptions and suggestions. He will 
thus be in condition to make progress in the line of 
work that he has chosen. His assurance of immediate 
attainment of a third-rate position may be less than that 
of the man who is educated only in technical details; 
but his chance of ultimate attainment of a first-rate 
position will be indefinitely greater. This is no mere 
theory; it is supported by the testimony of large em- 
ployers in different parts of the country and different 
lines of industry. 

But the chance of gain to the individual is not the 
only thing to be considered in estimating the relative 
value of scientific training, as compared with that wliich 
is purely technical. Its advantage to the nation as a 
whole is inestimably larger; for it is upon this higher 
scientific training that national progress is largely de- 
pendent. The man who has been educated to be a 
creature of routine generally clings to old methods ; the 
man who understands the theory of his business can 
develop new ones. The gain to the nation in having its 
industry progressively directed and conducted is some- 
thing which cannot be measured in dollars and cents. 
It is a primary condition of national efficiency. It is 
just because America enjoys pre-eminence in tliis respect 
that she holds her present place among the nations of 
the world. 

But it wiU be a mistake to suppose that the profes- 
sional skill which our people receive from the best scien- 
tific training constitutes the country's whole gain from 
collegiate education, or even the major part of it. 

A man is something more than a mere producer. He 
is a member of the body politic, living in constant and 

153 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

complex relations with his fellow-men. The right ad- 
justment of these relations between man and man is a 
more difficult and important thing than the development 
of technical skill. National education, if it is to be 
really national and not individual, must prepare the way 
for this adjustment. It must teach people not only to 
make the most of themselves, but to do the most for 
others. They must learn how to communicate their 
ideas so that others will understand them, to arrange 
their labor so that others can enjoy its fruits, and to 
take part in the work of govenunent so that the 
community as a whole shall be directed by pohtical 
intelligence instead of political ignorance. 

In order to insure clearness of communication, our 
higher education must teach proper use of language. 
Without such power over the means of expression, a 
man's thoughts are of no profit to any one but himself. 
He becomes a theorist in the bad sense of the word, — a 
person whose ideas cannot be made to help others. It 
is just because of deficiency in precise expression that 
theoretical training has been so often brought into con- 
tempt. The Greek word from which " theory " is 
derived means " breadth of view," In this sense the 
more we have of theory the better. But a man who 
makes his real or alleged breadth of view an excuse for 
his inability to tell other people about the details which 
they want to know becomes an intolerable nuisance. 
Nay, he may often become a self-deceived impostor ; for 
the man who cannot put his thought into language 
which others will understand is generally not sure of 
understanding it himself. 

In contributing to this clearness of communication, we 
have use alike for education in English, for education in 
other modern languages, and for education in the classics. 

154 



HIGHER EDUCATION AND PUBLIC WELFARE 

If we had to choose between the three, there is no 
question that English is the most important. It is the 
language in which our work is done. The man who is 
a master in its use possesses a power of control of those 
about him which can be obtained in no other way. He 
has an unrivalled command of synonyms which give 
exactness to his thought ; for there is no language 
which is nearly so rich as English in words to designate 
the different subjects of modern interest. But this does 
not mean that it ought to be taught to the exclusion of 
everything else. Every one recognizes that we have so 
much need to use French and German that no man can 
be called fully educated who fails to have some knowl- 
edge of both these languages. Our national problems 
may perhaps be solved by English alone ; our inter- 
national relations involve the knowledge of many other 
tongues besides. 

The reason for the study of the classics is at first sight 
less obvious. The time spent upon them is so great, 
and their tangible usefulness seems so small, that many 
people regard the whole matter as a waste of labor. 
Such reformers would have our schoolboys read Homer 
or Cicero in translations, and would have the time for 
grammatical drill spent upon Enghsh sentences instead 
of Greek or Latin. The chief difficulty with this plan is 
that we have at present so few teachers who are compe- 
tent to give good instruction in English except through 
the medium of Latin or Greek. Over and over again 
have I heard men argue for the extension of English 
teaching in place of the classics, when the speakers 
showed by their diction, their grammar, and their rheto- 
ric, that they had not the least conception of what good 
English expression really was. No man thinks that he 
can teach Latin without having studied it. His knowl- 

155 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

edge of Latin may be defective in a great many ways, 
but he at least knows liis deficiencies. On the other 
hand, there are thousands of men in the country who 
have never thoroughly studied Enghsh, but who would 
be insulted at the suggestion that they did not know it 
well enough for all practical purposes, including those 
of instruction. The marvellous grammatical system of 
Latin or of Greek, coming to us in a foreign language, 
arrests our attention and makes teachers and scholars 
feel that it is something to be seriously studied. When 
we have a body of teachers who are ready to teach Eng- 
hsh with equal seriousness, and are able to suppress 
that vastly greater body who handle it mechanically or 
carelessly, then, and not till then, shall we be able to 
talk of superseding the classics in our educational sys- 
tem. Under present conditions they remain vitally im- 
portant to the welfare of the country as a means to 
accurate expression and clear thought in the communi- 
cations between man and man. 

Nor is it enough that our educated men should be 
able to communicate their own ideas. They must also 
have the necessary intellectual basis for understanding 
the ideas of others. A body of men of whom each is 
interested exclusively in his own separate pursuits is in 
no sense an intellectual society. As a means to the 
highest progress of the whole body, the student of htera- 
ture must know enough of science to be inspired by 
scientific achievements ; the expert in science must 
know enough of litera-ture to feel the benefit from the 
best works of poetry and fiction. If there is any one 
characteristic which distinguishes the liberally educated 
man from his fellows, it is that breadth of view which 
prevents him from being absorbed in his own pursuits, 
to the exclusion of the wider range of human interests. 

156 



HIGHER EDUCATION AND PUBLIC WELFARE 

But this is not all. Our students must learn not only 
to conununicate ideas to others and to receive ideas from 
others, but also to adapt their work to others' wants. 
They must know how to suit their products, whether 
material or mtellectual, to the needs of those about 
them. A well-arranged college course provides for this 
m two ways. It does sometliing toward this end by the 
teaching of pohtical economy and sciences allied to it. 
By showing the places which different men hold in the 
business organism, it enables many of us to avoid mis- 
judgments and mistakes which might render our best 
work futile. But there is an indirect way in which a 
college course contributes more surely toward the same 
result. By allowing the student the choice of serious 
studies in a wide range of subjects, it enables him to 
make experiments which help him to decide upon the 
line in which he is best fitted to serve his fellow-men. 
The man whom nature intended for a doctor, but whom 
fate has driven into a la\vyer's office, does not find out 
his mistake until years of preliminary work have made it 
irrevocable. The farmer who is spoiled by trying to be 
a minister, and the minister who is spoiled by trying to 
be a farmer, have both gone so far in their ill-chosen call- 
ings as to be in many respects unfitted for the career for 
which nature designed them. But if the student has, 
during his college course, studied physiology and consti- 
tutional law side by side, or has had the chance to make 
experiments alike in providing for men's bodies and in 
saving men's souls, he can see far more clearly where 
his talent hes, and can let the experience of a single year 
determine rightly what otherwise could only be decided 
too late for repentance. 

A college course, if properly directed, must also train 
its students in the obligations of citizenship. This func- 

167 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

tion is more important in America than anywhere else. 
An American does not fulfil his whole duty if he is only 
a skilful specialist, or even if he is a good business man 
and nothing more. He has a broader duty as part of a 
sovereign people. He must know the constitution of 
the country and the spirit of its laws ; not in that per- 
functory way which is obtained by the acquisition of a 
few facts, but by a severe training in those principles of 
ethics and politics which are needed for the preservation 
of a free commonwealth. He must understand the in- 
direct effects of legislation no less than its direct and 
obvious ones. He must be familiar with the political 
liistory of his own nation and of other nations beside his 
own, in order that he may be a leader who will enable 
his fellow-men to look beyond the passions and preju- 
dices of the moment, and help them to see what is the 
probable bearing of the issues, as they arise, on the 
future welfare of the community. 

Rightly to accomplish this, the college must give its 
students sometliing more than mere training of the in- 
tellect. Much as intelligence is needed in the conduct 
of our business and our politics, we have learned that 
intelligence alone "will not accomplish everything. The 
higher education will do little toward making more 
efficient citizens unless it makes at the same time broader 
and better men. It must so inspire those who come 
under its influence that they shall apply, in the conduct 
of the larger affairs of the community, those principles 
of morals which are recognized as obligatory upon us in 
our relation to our families and our neighbors. 

All intelligent study of science, whether it be physics 
or biology, psychology or historj^, should train a man in 
that respect for law which is the best antidote to capri- 
cious self-will on the part of the individual. The stu- 

158 



HIGHER EDUCATION AND PUBLIC WELFARE 

dent learns that he is in the midst of an ordered world. 
If he has the root of the matter in him, he thereby gains 
increasing respect for that order, and readiness to become 
himself a part of it. It was the idea of the best of the 
ancient philosophers that virtue consisted in placing 
one's self in harmony with the universe. To him whose 
idea of the universe is narrow, the conception of such 
harmony will be narrow also. The one broadens with 
the other. And if, with this enlightened study of naV 
ural and moral law, there is combined at the same time 
the restraint of a healthful discipline and an enforced 
regularity, the student becomes gradually fitted for the 
highest duty of citizenship, the acceptance of self- 
imposed burdens in the interest of a general system of 
moral government. 

And there is a yet higher form in which this ideal 
may be realized. Tlie duties that are a burden, how- 
ever cheerfully performed, do not represent our full- 
est character development ; nor is the man who does his 
work in that spirit the most efficient contributor to his 
country's moral welfare. Far better is it if the per- 
formance of civic duty can be the result of an inspira- 
tion which makes it a joy and not a task. The teacher 
who is fitted for his calhng has the opportunity to im- 
part this inspiration through the study of great works 
of hterature and great deeds of history. There may be 
other ways in which his contribution to the well-being 
of the community is more direct and obvious ; but there 
is, I think, no way in which he can really do so much 
toward bringing out what is best in a nation. The boy 
or man who, at the most impressionable period of his 
Ufe, lives in company with heroes, whether of history or 
of fiction, has every chance to realize his own possibili- 
ties of heroic devotion. Of course this privilege, like 

159 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

every other, can be abused. There will be some who 
will become dreamers instead of heroes, — who will take 
the enjoyment furnished by the past, and give nothing 
in return. But fortunately, the atmosphere in our bet- 
ter colleges is not favorable to the dreamer. It offers a 
strong stimulus to work. This work may not always be 
directed on the Hues which teachers, or even parents, 
would most approve. It may manifest itseK on the foot- 
ball field or on the river with far more spontaneity than 
in the classroom; but as long as those who seek their 
glory in athletic sports are subjected to rigid training 
rules, we need have little fear that the power directed 
into these channels will prove a total loss. That a 
university, as to-day constituted, gives opportunities for 
waste of time, none can deny; but that such waste is 
habitual I beheve no one who has studied the facts 
would be disposed for a moment to admit. If what 
has been said in the preceding paragraphs is true, those 
very parts of our collegiate education which are less 
immediately practical, and winch seem to give the most 
opportunity for misdirected energy, are the ones which 
have their highest usefulness in the preparation for the 
citizenship of the commonwealth. 



160 



THE DIRECTION OF AMERICAN 
UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT 

Of the many distinctive features of American life 
there is none which more forcibly strikes a keen 
observer than the habit of private munificence in the 
foundation of universities. Other aspects may seem 
more noticeable to the man who looks only at the sur- 
face, — our material prosperity, our fertility in mechan- 
ical invention, our progress in business organization, 
our achievements in applying, on a large scale, the 
principle of political equality. But none of these things 
has the fundamentally distinctive character which is 
possessed by our system of university endowment. 
Each is but the reproduction on broader lines of things 
which the Old World has done before, and still is 
doing. Our system of higher education has character- 
istics of its own. The European observer has been 
accustomed to see colleges that were founded under 
ecclesiastical control, and colleges that were founded 
under political control. He finds in the experiences of 
older countries a counterpart, more or less complete, to 
the early history of Harvard and of Yale, of the Uni- 
versity of Michigan or the University of California. 
But he can find no parallel in Europe to our great 
movement of the last forty years toward the private 
endowment of free educational institutions, — that move- 
ment which has resulted in the establishment of Cor- 
11 161 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

nell, of Johns Hopkins, and of Chicago ; that movement 
which has, by its indirect influence, modified the char- 
acter of other institutions, so that the old denomina- 
tional and partisan control has become in many cases a 
thing of the past. 

It is now more than thirty years since this series of 
foundations began. Their extent and their success 
have more than realized the expectations of the most 
sanguine. The number and magnitude of private gifts 
to higher education increases year by year. The insti- 
tutions founded by these gifts have had careers of great 
prosperity; and each, as it in turn attains its majority, 
can point with satisfaction to the honorable realization 
of the general purpose with which it was created. But 
the specific direction which has been taken by these 
institutions has been in many respects different from 
what was expected. It was confidently predicted that 
the results of these endowments would show themselves 
in one of three ways : either by an increased populariza- 
tion of learning, which should make the university thus 
founded a vast lyceum; or by a development of new 
facilities for technical training, which should equip the 
student to make a better living by modern methods 
than he could by old ones ; or, by the establishment of 
more numerous places for the endowment of scientific 
research and discovery, where a relatively small number 
of specialists should be encouraged to prosecute, in 
learned isolation, those studies whose results should 
form a basis for the progress of mankind. 

Not one of these three ideals has been realized. On 
the contrary, the education furnished by the colleges 
and universities under new methods of endowment has 
been singularly like that which was given by many of 
the older institutions. Not that the new universities 

162 



AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT 

have slavishly patterned their methods and courses 
upon those of their predecessors ; but that all institu- 
tions, new or old, ecclesiastical, political, or springing 
from private endowment, have been compelled by force 
of circumstances to approximate toward a common type 
more or less independent of the wishes of those who 
established and controlled them. 

That this process has been on the whole a salutary 
one I think there can be no doubt. Whether the 
founders of these several institutions foresaw the gen- 
eral lines of their future history — as in some cases they 
undoubtedly did — or whether they builded better than 
they knew, the type of the modern American university 
has in it profounder capacities for public service than 
would be furnished by any lyceum however broad, by 
any group of technical schools however practical, or 
by any aggregation of scientific specialists however dis- 
interested in their devotion to their several pursuits. 

It is the purpose of this address to discuss these three 
conceptions of a university: as a popularizer of knowl- 
edge, as a training place for professional experts, and 
as a home of scientific specialists ; to show wherein the 
modern American university type differs from each and 
all of these three ; and to indicate the reasons why the 
type which has thus developed itself is a natural out- 
growth of the profoundest needs of the American 
people. 

The conception that the American university reaches 
its highest usefulness in popularizing knowledge is a 
favorite one in many quarters. Those who look at the 
matter in this way reason somewhat as follows: It is 
the function of a university to give knoAvledge of sci- 
ence and art. The exigencies of the American people, 
its democratic government, its theory of equality of 

163 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

mankind, require that such knowledge should be as 
widely diffused as possible. The public schools are 
able to do this during the early years of life and in the 
more elementary branches of instruction. The univer- 
sity ought to do this, and to find its widest scope of 
usefulness in doing this, for persons in more advanced 
years wishing to continue liberal studies on a higher 
scale. Those who hold this view think that the uni- 
versity, within its own limits, is a place where any 
man can pursue any subject of learning which he de- 
sires ; and they further believe that it should go outside 
its own limits, and furnish lecture courses which will 
bring within the reach of the whole community the 
results of most modern investigations in science, in art, 
and in history. 

Each of these conceptions has in it much that is 
noble. Each is good in its own place. I would not 
for one moment undervalue the zeal of those who strive 
to supplement the deficiencies of early training by 
attendance on courses of lectures at the university or 
under its auspices; but I should be disposed to warn 
them and to warn the public against overestimating the 
value of education which can be obtained in this way. 
Speaking broadly, lectures do a great deal less good 
than is popularly supposed. Very few men or women 
gain as much real mental benefit by hearing a lecture as 
they gain by reading a book. The personal magnetism 
of the lecturer carries the members of his audience with 
him, and leads them to believe that they possess the 
real knowledge which the}^ seek ; but this belief is too 
often a delusion, worse than useless in its results. In 
reading a book or a magazine the serious student can 
stop and think over the difficulties as they arise, in 
order to be sure that he understands each proposition 

164 



AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT 

before he passes on to the next. It is true that he has 
not the advantage of making inquiry of the author 
concerning his own special difficulties ; but the superior 
chance of making inquiry of himself many times out- 
weighs the inferior chance of making inquiry of another. 

It is a misconception to regard the university of 
to-day as being primarily a centre for the diffusion of 
learning. That work of diffusion is mainly done, and, 
on the whole, better done, by the printing-press. What 
a man is anxious to communicate to the public speedily 
he now puts into a newspaper or magazine ; what he is 
ready to communicate to the public deliberately he puts 
into a book. In either case he lays down his points 
just as clearly as he possibly can. If the reader cannot 
follow them, it is either because the subject is too diffi- 
cult for him, or because he lacks the power of concen- 
trated attention which is necessary for mastering any 
abstruse subject whatever. So far as lectures mask the 
difficulties of the topic treated, or lead people to expect 
others to do the work of riveting their attention, instead 
of relying upon themselves for this prime necessity, so 
far they are likely to prove a positive harm. The true 
function of a university is the creation of knowledge 
rather than its diffusion. It must be a centre of 
thought where old and young, leaders and followers, 
are working together in a common line, learning those 
principles and making those discoveries which are trans- 
mitted to the public through a variety of agencies, of 
which the lecture platform is but one, and in no wise 
the most important. 

Widely different, and in some respects sounder, is 
the position of those who regard the university as a 
group of schools for technical training. These men 
recognize the force of all that has been said concerning 

165 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

the necessity of class work and the value of hard study- 
by men organized in groups. They hold that this 
classroom work and study should be so ordered as to 
give the utmost advantage to those who are fitting 
themselves for various lines of professional life. They 
would have matters so arranged that in the briefest 
time possible a man might become an able lawyer, or 
engineer, or physician; they would, in short, offer 
facilities whereby a man should learn to pursue each 
important calling — commercial, manufacturing, or agri- 
cultural — by the best scientific methods. In this way, 
we are told, the efficiency of the citizens of our republic 
would be greatly increased, the time of preparation for 
their lifework would be kept within reasonable limits, 
and their productivity, whether in earning a living for 
themselves or in serving those about them, would be 
raised many times above its present basis. 

All this is doubtless true ; yet it does not represent 
the whole work which a university ought to do, and 
perhaps not the largest part of it. Consistently carried 
out, this plan tends to fit a man to take his place as 
part of a social machine ; it does not educate him to be 
a fully developed citizen of a commonwealth. In fact, 
its effect in the latter respect may be positively bad. 
Education which is too exclusively technical exagger- 
ates the tendency, already too strong at the present 
day, to measure things solely by their commercial value. 
Anything which tends to exalt professional skill as an 
ideal in education, and ignores the need of wider ideals, 
both in intellect and character, fails to train a race of 
freemen. I would not for one moment depreciate the 
work of a good law school or a good scientific school, of 
a good medical college or a good agricultural college ; 
but I would insist most emphatically that a college of 

166 



AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT 

American citizens must be something more than any 
of these, or than all of them put together. 

The third of these partial or imperfect conceptions of 
a university is that of a place exclusively devoted to 
scientific research. Those who hold this view have 
much that is right and noble in their ideal. They 
understand that the creation of knowledge is a greater 
and more difficult work than its diffusion; and they 
recognize the duty of the university to assume this 
work, with all the difficulties which it involves. They 
also have the merit, doubly important in these days, of 
insisting on non-commercial standards. They would 
inculcate the pursuit of truth for its own sake, inde- 
pendent of the question of its economic productivity to 
the student. They advocate and develop one of the 
noblest parts of university life. But, in spite of all 
this, they are far from having grasped the full concep- 
tion of what universities can do for the country. The 
scientific specialist, so long as he remains a specialist, 
is something less than a whole man. A university 
whose teaching force is composed of such specialists, 
and which stimulates the development of such special- 
ists throughout its student body, is imperfectly fulfil- 
ling its functions in training the coming generation for 
the responsibilities of their life. It is simply a peculiar 
kind of technical school; exceptional in its character, 
indeed, because it teaches its students to make dis- 
coveries instead of to make money, but, nevertheless, 
occupied with the training of a particular class rather 
than with the education of the body politic. Valuable 
as are the services of that class, and important as it is 
to endow the research of those who are serving the 
public in non-remunerative lines, we cannot regard 
the scientific specialist as the consummate flower of 

167 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

American education, any more than is the specialist in 
law or in medicine, in engineering or in theology. 

The most profoundly important work which falls to 
the lot of the American citizen is his work of guiding 
the destinies of the country. It is at once his greatest 
privilege and his heaviest duty. If we train the mem- 
bers of the rising generation to do this well, all other 
things can be trusted to take care of themselves. If 
we do not train them to do this well, no amount of edu- 
cation in other lines will make up for the deficiency. 

The founders of our nation saw that free men must 
have the knowledge necessary to enable them to use 
that freedom to the public advantage. The American 
public school system owes its origin to this perception. 
It was intended to give our citizens the intelligence 
necessary for the performance of their political duties. 
As the degree of enlightenment necessary for the fulfil- 
ment of those duties has increased, the scope of public 
school education has also widened. But we are grad- 
ually coming to perceive that we need a change in the 
quality of our training even more than in its quantity. 
Mere intelligence on the part of the voters, however 
great, is not sufficient to secure wise administration of 
the affairs of the country as a whole. Each change in 
industrial and political methods makes it clearer that 
they must have also a sense of trusteeship; and the 
training of this sense of trusteeship is at once a more 
difficult and a more important thing than the develop- 
ment of mere political intelligence. Without this sense 
we can have no public sentiment, in the true meaning 
of the word. Without it we may perhaps be capable 
of dealing with small things, but we are helpless in the 
presence of great ones. Without it we find ourselves 
each year less competent to handle either our industrial 

168 



AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT 

or our political problems in the interest of the common- 
wealth as a whole. 

The task of creating this sense of trusteeship is so 
great as to require the co-operation of many agencies. 
But there is no one part of our national life where there 
are so many opportunities for its development as in our 
colleges and universities. Their members are still at 
an impressionable age. They are living in communi- 
ties, each of which has its traditions, its collective 
sentiment, and its loyalty which carries the individual 
outside of himself. Here, if anywhere, we have free- 
dom from that excessive commercialism which domi- 
nates most other departments of American life. Here, 
if anywhere, we have the opportunity for the study of 
those things which are broad instead of those which 
are narrow, of things which are permanent instead of 
those which are transitory. Here we have, as it exists 
nowhere else, the opportunity to make men acquire the 
habit of thinking and living in an atmosphere purer 
than that of their own selfish interests. 

It is impossible to say in detail exactly what studies 
and arrangements of the course will best conduce toward 
these ends. Different men and different localities re- 
quire a certain degree of difference in the education 
which is required to train them in public spirit. It is, 
however, possible to lay down certain general principles 
which are of service in this respect, and whose impor- 
tance is gradually being recognized by leaders of higher 
education ; who, starting from widely divergent stand- 
points, are gradually coming nearer one another in 
principles and in practice. 

It must be recognized, in the first place, that a large 
part of the education which is obtained by the students 
of the university is that which they themselves give to 

1.69 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

one another. This is true to a large degree in matters 
of intellect. It is true to an overwhelming degree in 
matters of sentiment and public spirit. However great 
may be the value of the instruction obtained in the 
classroom, and of the facilities which a college offers by 
its libraries and its laboratories, it is probable that only 
a small minority of the students finds its chief profit 
from this source. The thing which makes college life 
of the greatest value to the citizenship of the country is 
that the men and women who come under its influence 
get a larger acquaintance with different types of char- 
acter and with different lines of human thought, as 
exemplified by living people. Book learning alone 
tends to have a narrowing effect on the intellectual 
vision. In order that it may become a means of char- 
acter building, it is of the utmost importance that it 
should be pursued in the midst of a community with 
collective interests and activities, which take its mem- 
bers outside of themselves. Those collegiate authorities 
who deem their responsibility to be ended when they 
have provided books and apparatus, lectures and classes, 
take a fatally incomplete view of their duties. Upon 
them rests the further responsibility to do all that they 
can to preserve the traditions and sentiments in a place 
of which they themselves are the permanent population, 
amid shifting generations of students. Upon them 
rests the responsibility for the preservation of standards 
of public order in the community about them ; for the 
maintenance, as far as lies in their power, of athletic 
purity and fairness in the dealings of each university 
with its rivals; for the fullest development of those 
religious sentiments of reverence and self-devotion 
without which churches are powerless, and creeds are 
but empty forms. 

170 



AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT 

In order that our collegiate courses should thus 
furnish means of mutual education, their studies must 
be so arranged as to attract the kind of students who 
are capable of giving this education to one another. 

For this there is one prime necessity, without which 
all else is useless. The course must be one for workers 
and not for idlers. It must furnish hard tasks, not 
only for the effect of those tasks upon the individual, 
but still more for their effect in making the college 
a place for students who are not afraid of difficulties. 
Poor as was the curriculum of our colleges at the begin- 
ning of the century, it had this cardinal merit, that it 
admitted no loafing. The men who lived for four years 
in its atmosphere might obtain a narrow conception of 
learning, and go forth into the world scantily provided 
with practical equipment for the details of life; but 
they had obtained that habit of determination in the 
face of difficulties which does more than everything 
else to make a body of men powerful in their several 
spheres. 

The problem is no longer so simple as it was in the 
days of the early New England colleges. Modern 
educators have given us new methods of teaching; 
modern life has given us a new range of interests; 
modern technical training claims its share of the time 
of the student in his collegiate years no less than in his 
years of professional study. We must see to it that 
we offer our students the benefit of all these things, 
without sacrificing those fundamental characteristics 
which made the colleges of the earlier generation great. 
Our course must be sufficiently modern to attract liv- 
ing men and women, yet it must not deal with things 
so exclusively modern that it is a distraction instead of 
a means of cohesion. It must deal in proper proportion 

171 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

with the classic literature of different nations, not 
simply because of the effect of those classics, whether 
ancient or modern, in forming the judgments of the 
students themselves, but for the sake of attracting a 
student body which cares for something profounder 
than the novel or drama of the day, for something 
wider than the present in literature, in art, and in his- 
tory. Our course must deal with matters sufficiently 
practical to prevent the students from feeling that they 
have wasted their time ; but, on the other hand, it must 
avoid the far greater danger of becoming so exclusively 
practical that it does not teach theory. It must admit 
of a sufficient degree of specialization to allow those 
students for whom time is money to share in its advan- 
tages as a basis for their professional careers; but if 
this specialization goes so far as to make the course 
attractive only to those students whose interests are 
special rather than general, and to confirm them in 
their withdrawal from the broader aspects of life in the 
college and in the world, so far does it defeat our 
purpose of training citizens in public spirit. 

Finally, in the later years of university life, when 
the foundations of general interest have been laid, and 
specialized work of professional preparation has become 
the dominant aim, we must see to it that the students 
are educated in broad aspects of professional action 
rather than narrow ones. It is a mistake, on every 
ground, if a school makes its work a mere anticipation 
of the teaching of the office or the shop; for in after 
life the things which it thus teaches generally have to 
be learned over again, while the things which it thereby 
fails to teach are generally not learned at all. 

In thus emphasizing the broad instead of the narrow 
sides of professional study, and the importance of trains- 

172 



AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT 

ing in theory rather than training in practice, I do not 
for one moment mean to depreciate tlie value of the 
work which is done in laboratories, in individual inves- 
tigations, and in all those things which make a man 
master of the applications of the science or art which 
he is studying. But they should be regarded as appli- 
cations rather than primary objects. The laboratory 
should be a thought-shop rather than a workshop. It 
should be an auxiliary to the understanding of prin- 
ciples rather than a preparation for the doing of details. 
So soon as the man values the shopwork for its own 
sake, rather than as a means of education, he starts 
on the wrong road. One of the ablest and largest 
employers of labor in the transportation industries of 
the country has said that there is no evil so hard to 
correct as that overvaluation of mere mechanical work 
to which some of the misdirected professional schools 
conduce. Nor does the harm stop with the individual. 
It affects his attitude toward his fellow men. It tends 
to make the professions of our country mechanical in 
their worst sense, reducing their members to the level 
of parts of a machine, instead of raising them to their 
responsibilities as independent members of a body 
politic. 

There was a time, not so many years ago, when these 
great principles seemed in peril of being forgotten ; 
when there was danger that general training would be 
sacrificed to technical training ; that breadth would give 
place to specialization ; and that, in the furtherance of 
the education given by professors in their classrooms, 
we should neglect to consider that wider education 
given by the students to one another. But with the 
problems which have been forced upon us as a nation, 
we have come to consider more seriously the means 

173 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

which are needed to meet them ; and the result of that 
consideration is showing itself in the direction of uni- 
versity development to-day. Without sacrificing their 
thoroughness, the older colleges have expanded their 
sphere of interest. Without sacrificing their character 
as public institutions, the state universities have allowed 
new sentiments and traditions to grow about them. 
The recent private foundations, under wise and able 
leadership, have striven with marked success to select 
what was best in either type, and to add their own con- 
tribution thereto. Now, as never before, the leaders 
of college education in this country, while differing in 
the detail of their methods, are animated by a common 
purpose. It is not enough for them to popularize learn- 
ing, to train professional experts, or even to furnish 
laboratories for scientific research. All these things 
they do; but all these things they use as a means to 
the greater end of training the citizens of the republic 
to assume the new trusts and obligations which the 
future has in store. Not in the promotion of different 
churches, not in the development of different sections, 
not even in the elevation of different callings, do our 
universities place their ideal ; but in the service of one 
learning, of one country, and of one God. 



174 



FUNDAMENTAL EEQUIREMENTS IN 
SCHOOL EDUCATION 

Feom the time of De Quincey onward, it has been a 
familiar thought that good teaching aims at two distinct 
objects: the imparting of knowledge and the evoking 
of power. Only when it combines both these achieve- 
ments can a school system claim to have accomplished 
its purpose. It should give its pupils, before they go 
out into practical life, sufficient knowledge to enable 
them to move intelligently among the men and things 
which surround them, and sufficient power to use that 
knowledge in the various emergencies which are likely 
to arise. 

The old educational system was almost entirely occu- 
pied with the production of power. Whatever knowl- 
edge it imparted was incidental, and was confined 
within very narrow lines. Every boy or girl was ex- 
pected to learn the three R's, — reading, writing and 
arithmetic. If the school children of past generations 
pursued their studies faithfully, they found themselves 
equipped with these three tools of trade, and with little 
else. If, in the course of their efforts to learn to read, 
they had caught some knowledge of history or science 
or literature, this was a fortunate accident, in which 
they had the advantage of most of their fellows. Even 
if they went on from school to college, the same narrow- 
ness of training was continued. Their time was de- 

175 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

voted chiefly to classics and mathematics, with a little 
metaphysics, — • all valuable as exercises for the mind ; 
all capable, in the hands of a good teacher, of helping 
the student to obtain power of expression for his 
thoughts; but all conveying very slight knowledge of 
literature, still less of art, and none of modern science. 

Within the last fifty years there has been a reaction. 
Our discoveries in the world of nature have been so 
important that they have secured increasing recognition 
of their results in school courses. This widened study 
of modern science has been attended by an increased 
attention to modern literature also. The pupils have 
been given the opportunity to know things which were 
worth knowing, and to read things which were worth 
reading. This movement has resulted not only in the 
addition of new subjects of study, but in a radical 
change of m^hod of teaching the old ones. Arithmetic 
or geography, as now handled, is a very different thing 
from what it was fifty years ago. It is full of illustra- 
tion adapted to the needs and interests of each child. It 
is rendered pleasant and easy instead of hard. These 
tendencies have made themselves felt alike in the col- 
leges and the high schools, the grammar schools and 
the kindergartens. In place of a curriculum designed 
for mental discipline, through which all were compelled 
to pass, we have an educational system intended to 
give knowledge and the enjoyment connected with the 
acquirement of knowledge; taking account of the vari- 
ous tastes of children in the successive stages of their 
progress, and branching, at a comparatively early date, 
into an elective system, whereby each student can choose 
those subjects which he most needs or appreciates. 

There can be no doubt that this reaction from the 
excessive narrowness of the old-fashioned courses of 

176 



FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION 

study has been in many ways a salutary thing. We 
may, however, fairly raise the question whether it has 
not gone too far; whether, in meeting the increased 
demands for knowledge, we are not sacrificing the 
assurance of training in power; whether a generation 
of children which has been taught to read a few inter- 
esting works of literature and to know a number of 
important facts in natural science, but which is not 
over-strong in arithmetic and is distinctly weak in 
spelling, is quite so well educated as it claims to be. 
In asking this question we do not cast ridicule on 
modern methods of teaching. Some of those who are 
to-day propounding it most seriously are the very men 
who twenty years ago were most active in the introduc- 
tion of these methods. Just because they understand 
the need of a really liberal education, they feel the 
necessity of seeing that this education shall l)e placed 
upon a solid basis. They are not arguing against giv- 
ing modern classics, especially those in our own lan- 
guage, a full recognition side by side with ancient 
classics, nor against letting modern science take the 
place of ancient philosophy; but they are arguing for 
such care in the introduction of these changes and in 
the pursuit of these studies as shall prevent them from 
becoming a mere distraction and shall allow them to 
remain a discipline. 

There is good reason to raise a voice of warning 
against one-sided absorption in modern educational 
ideals, to the exclusion of everything else. We are in 
the presence of a combination of causes which produce 
a real danger that our teachers will lay too much stress 
on knowledge and too little on power. 

In the first place, the pupils, with few exceptions, 
enjoy being taught knowledge, and do not enjoy being 
12 177 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

taught power. The teaching of knowledge satisfies 
their curiosity; and anything which satisfies curiosity 
is a pleasure to the average child no less than to the 
average adult. The teaching of power fatigues their 
mind; and the average child dislikes mental fatigue 
almost as much as the average grown person. There is 
an apparent spontaneity in the study of facts, especially 
when it is varied to suit the immediate tastes of the 
children. There is an apparent irksomeness in the 
study of principles which are intended to give future 
power. It too often happens that the active and enter- 
prising teacher, who desires spontaneous manifestations 
of life on the part of his pupils, is thus led to give 
undue preference to the less important part of his work. 
In the next place, the teacher likes to see tangible 
results; and the imparting of knowledge gives those 
results. When a pupil has mastered a fact, this can 
he made evident immediately; while it takes days and 
weeks to be sure that he has mastered a principle. 
Moreover, the teacher, unless he be a very exceptional 
person, is likely to overestimate the amount which he 
has achieved when he has taught the child a few facts. 
He thinks that he has trained the attention of the 
pupil, when really he has only given that pupil things 
which he liked, and made him less capable rather than 
more capable of attending to things which he does not 
like. Many a student in our modern schools has been 
simply stuffed with the sugar plums of education. By 
offering a child a pound of candy you can very rapidly 
increase his weight by one pound, and can produce all 
the external symptoms of a vigorous appetite ; but any 
sensible man or woman knows that the weight thus 
gained is transient, and the appetite thus evoked worse 
than illusory. 

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FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION 

Unfortunately, there are a great many people who 
are not sensible in judging educational effects ; and 
these people aid and abet the teachers in their desire 
to show tangible results in the form of gratified curios- 
ity and acquired knowledge. The parents are pleased 
to have the pupils interested in their studies. The 
committees are pleased to have the pupils acquainted 
with so many facts of modern life. Not until the value 
of studies is tested by their effects upon working 
efficiency does the public find how imperfectly it has 
measured the relative importance of different kinds of 
education. 

This test begins to come as soon as pupils pass from 
schools of a lower grade to those of a higher. It is too 
often found that the studies which have aroused the 
srreatest immediate interest and attention are bad rather 
than good as a preparation for further pursuit of school 
work. The high school feels this in taking students 
from the common school ; the college feels it in taking 
students from the high school. While the teachers 
who have charge of the pupil at an earlier age are 
pressing for variety of studies and knowledge of many 
kinds, those who have charge of these pupils in sub- 
sequent years are disposed to insist on the necessity of 
stricter previous training in a relatively small number 
of fields. They see that much which is regarded as a 
variety of intellectual stimulus is really a sort of in- 
tellectual dissipation; and they say that those pupils 
alone are prepared to go on with higher studies who 
have learned to do hard work without the artificial 
stimulus incident to such dissipation. 

It is quite possible that the teachers in our colleges 
are wrong in laying too much stress on the preparatory 
side of the high school course ; for the majority of 

179 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

pupils in high schools do not and cannot enter college. 
It is in like manner possible that the high school teachers 
are wrong in insisting that the grammar school studies 
should be arranged with a view toward preparation for 
high school needs ; for only a part of our grammar 
school pupils can ever hope to attend the high school. 
But it is quite certainly an error to go to the opposite 
extreme ; to say that the grammar school course must 
be so arranged as to give the maximum development 
and enjoyment to the grammar school pupil, and that 
the high schools must arrange to fit their work upon it ; 
or to say that the high school course must be adapted 
to the general needs of high school pupils alone, and 
that the colleges must take as a preparation for their 
students the thing which proves best for those who 
are not going to be their students. We may as well 
recognize the fact that there is a real conflict of inter- 
ests, in each grade, between the pupils who are not 
going any further and those who are. If a pupil, 
whether in the grammar school or the high school, is 
near the end of his course of study, he doubtless needs 
to get a good deal of descriptive science at that point ; 
because if he does not get it then, he probably never 
will get it at all, and in this age of the world no one 
can be called educated who has not some general knowl- 
edge of science. But if some other pupil who is laying 
the foundation for years of subsequent study is thus 
allowed to substitute descriptive science for arithmetic, 
or algebra, or trigonometry, according to the stage of 
development which he may have reached, it is not 
simply a waste of time ; it may readily prove a positive 
harm. Many a boy has suffered actual injury by study- 
ing too extensively into the phenomena of force before 
he has mastered the mathematical principles which 

180 "^ 



FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION 

regulate them. His apparent knowledge of fact, com- 
bined with a real ignorance of underlying principle, has 
produced in his mind such an inversion of the true 
order of things, and destroyed so much his power of 
really reasoning about those things, that it proves a 
handicap for many years afterward. Nor is it in theoret- 
ical studies alone that these difficulties and losses are 
felt. Leading employers of labor in the more complex 
branches of mechanical engineering tell me that those 
students who have allowed their laboratory practice to 
degenerate into shop work, and who have treated their 
experiments in the scientific school not as means of 
mastering principles, but as things valuable in their 
own sake, have almost fatally undermined their power 
of rising to the higher walks of the profession. 

In like manner it is of great consequence that the 
pupils in every stage of school life should have as 
much knowledge of literature as our teachers can give 
them ; but if those who are expecting to pursue literary 
studies in connection with their professional work — 
whether in the ministry, the law, or the field of journal- 
ism — allow their enjoyment of books to interfere with 
accurate study of expression, and with that mastery of 
language which can only be obtained by hard work over 
individual words, we have purchased a small gain at 
an incalculable price. 

Ruskin has said — nor is he alone in saying it — that 
the apparent culmination of the art of a people is the 
beginning of its decadence. When a school of artists 
begins to branch out into the full enjoyment of its 
powers, it indicates that the underlying development of 
power is drawing near to its close. This analogy holds 
good, to a large degree, in the life history of each indi- 
vidual. That stage of education where the boy or girl 

181 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

is allowed to reap the largest tangible fruits in the 
way of enjoyment of science and literature seems to 
be, in nine cases out of ten, precisely the time when 
hold on concentrated power is being relaxed instead of 
tightened. 

An illustration from another field of education, which 
is not officially recognized as part of our school system, 
will serve to make this point clearer. The inexperi- 
enced trainer who attempts to develop a football team 
usually begins by teaching his men an extensive knowl- 
edge of the game. He shows them formations which 
they can employ and tricks which they can practise. 
Those formations and those tricks will cause them to 
win against inexperienced opponents. But after a few 
days of that kind of play they will find that they have 
reached the limit of their development; that they can- 
not go on, and are almost sure to fall back. On the 
other hand, the experienced coach or captain will, in 
the first days of his season, teach his men to play foot- 
ball, — clean, straight, hard, uninteresting football. Not 
until a few days before the final trial will he teach those 
details of formation which to the student of the game 
are matters of such surpassing interest. So well known 
has this principle become that the success or failure of 
a team during its season is dependent on the observance 
or non-observance of this principle. The teaching of 
details must be reserved for the culminating stage of 
training, instead of being advanced to the prepara- 
tory one. 

It will perhaps be said that these suggestions are 
vague and general, and that they need to be made 
much more specific before they can be put into practice. 
I acknowledge the justice of this objection. What has 
been thus far said is intended to afford a point of view 

182 



FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION 

rather than to present a detailed scheme of education. 
But there are certain practical consequences that follow 
the adoption of this point of view which are sufficiently 
clear to be formulated in detail. 

One of these has already been plainly implied. If 
the views thus far advanced are correct, we must, in 
the educational scheme of the future, look forward to 
a separation of groups of students, not so much on the 
line of their different tastes as on the line of probable 
duration of the educational course. I am aware that 
this idea is not in harmony with the general tendency 
of the moment. That tendency is to have the students 
divided into groups according to their different mental 
tastes. In those colleges which have the elective sys- 
tem this idea is completely carried out. In the high 
schools it is being developed to a considerable degree. 
There is a demand in certain quarters for its introduc- 
tion into the grammar schools. But the difficulties and 
the evils attendant upon this movement have become 
so manifest that voices are being everywhere raised in 
protest against its further extension. It is seen that 
the apparent tastes of the pupil, at any rate in the 
earlier stages of his education, are a very unsafe guide 
in determining what education he really requires. I 
am inclined to think that different kinds of pupils in 
our secondary schools need not so much an opportunity 
to pursue different groups of studies as an opportunity 
to pursue the same group in different ways; the differ- 
ence being determined by the question whether the 
course in any subject is intended to be a finishing 
course or a preparation for something more thorough. 
In the former case it will need to be made as extensive 
as possible, with a view of imparting the necessary 
minimum of knowledge. In the latter case it will need 

183 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

to be made as intensive as possible, in order that the 
student may attain that maximum of power which shall 
enable him sucessfully to use and apply the knowl- 
edge which he will subsequently acquire. Take a 
concrete instance from our experience in teaching law 
to college classes. It is extremely desirable that our 
graduates, as they go out into the world, shall have a 
general knowledge of legal principles and their applica- 
tions to problems which confront the citizen. It is 
possible in a course of two or three hours per week to 
give the student this general knowledge. To the man 
who does not expect to be a lawyer this is invaluable. 
But to the man who looks forward to the law as a 
career it has surprisingly little use. The whole matter 
has from the necessities of the case been so superficially 
dealt with that no foundation is given for the closer 
and more thorough study which is required of the 
specialist. To reach the needs of these two distinct 
sets of men we have to arrange two courses of instruc- 
tion, — one broad and relatively superficial, the other 
narrow and profound. Such a separation doubtless has 
its inconveniences ; and it may well be that these incon- 
veniences are greater in the schools than in the colleges. 
But I think there can be no question that it would be 
salutary in its effects, both on those who were complet- 
ing their school course and upon those who still had 
years of study before them. And if it is thus salutary, 
its adoption as a principle will in the long run produce 
economy rather than waste. 

In the next place a very heavy duty rests upon those 
in charge of our high schools and colleges so to arrange 
their examinations that teachers in the earlier stages of 
the educational system will be helped rather than hin- 
dered in their efforts to insist on the necessity of train- 

184 



FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION 

ing for future work. Entrance examinations should be 
made tests of the power to go on with what is before 
the pupils rather than tests of acquirement in what is 
behind them. With the pressure that is placed upon 
our common school teachers to secure immediate results 
— pressure coming alike from their pupils, from their 
own ambitions, and from the outside public — the very 
least that the authorities in schools of higher grade can 
do is to lend their aid in resisting such tendencies. 
Above all things, let us not yield to the fallacy that a 
great amount of knowledge can be allowed to make 
good a deficiency of power as an indication of fitness to 
proceed further. The boy or girl who knows many 
things superficially and nothing systematically had bet- 
ter be advised to go out into practical life at once. 
The subsequent school life of such a boy or girl is 
likely to be illusory in its benefits. The college course 
which attracts such persons operates as an incentive to 
waste of time. Students of this type are the ones who 
bring upon our colleges the reproach of inefficiency; 
and those colleges who, by their methods of admission 
and instruction, lay themselves open to this reproach, 
are guilty of the gravest dereliction of their duty. 

In whatever studies we may select for our school 
course, we should lay emphasis on training in principles K 
rather than on attention to details. 

Modern educational authorities insist that teachers 
should be as concrete as possible in all their statements, 
and should enforce them by illustrations which will 
appeal to the imagination. This concreteness has great 
value in its proper place ; but it may sometimes be car- 
ried too far. In many cases the illustration is the one 
thing that remains in the mind of the child, and the 
principle which it is intended to develop is lost sight 

185 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

of. The pupil's natural tendency to lay stress on 
accessories and incidents is so great that it needs no 
artificial encouragement. I can testify personally that, 
though I spent nearly a year in the study of Arnold's 
Latin Prose Composition, the salient facts which re- 
main in my mind are that Balbus built a wall, and that 
it makes no difference to Balbus whether he drinks 
wine or water ; while the methods of translating these 
things into Latin have passed wholly out of mind. I 
can also state from experience that three men of my 
own age, who compared their recollections of Green- 
leaf's Common School Arithmetic, all remembered that 
A. Atwood can hoe a certain field in ten days, and with 
the assistance of his son Jerry can hoe it in seven days, 
and with the assistance of his son Jacob can hoe it in 
six days; and that the further question was asked how 
long it would take Jerry and Jacob to hoe it together; 
but what the answer was to that question, or what were 
the means by which the answer was obtained, were 
things of which they professed no recollection. 

The true function of the concrete illustration in arith- 
metic or in any other study is like that of the concrete 
experiment in physics. Whether it is a help or a 
hindrance to teaching will depend upon the spirit in 
which it is used. Attention to the detail of the illus- 
tration is good up to a certain point ; beyond that point 
it causes the illustration to be remembered for its own 
sake, and not for the sake of what it proves. A mere 
difference of emphasis, repeated fifty times a day, will 
make all the difference between good teaching and bad 
teaching. Many a time have I gone into a primary 
school and heard the question, " Two apples and three 
apples make how many apples ? " Li dealing with the 
subject of the sentence the stress upon apples is allow- 

186 



FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION 

able enough ; but in the predicate the legitimate thing 
to emphasize is the phrase "how many," and any 
departure from this emphasis is bad teaching. It leads 
the child to think too much of the apples and too little 
of the number. The temptation to make this mistake 
is strong, because the child cares more about apples 
than it does about numbers; but the consequence of 
this misdirected attention is a diversion from the under- 
lying principle involved. The real teaching is not 
nearly so great in amount as the apparent teaching, nor 
so good in quality. This is a fact which the teacher 
often overlooks, and which is also overlooked, I am 
sorry to say, by some of the authorities in our normal 
schools. 

In these days of material progress and of specializa- 
tion in detail there is more need than ever of emphasiz- 
ing general principles. Plato was not wholly mistaken 
in his theory that the idea, the concept, the law, are 
the really fundamental things, and that the specific 
details which come before our eyes have their chief 
importance as manifestations of some underlying law or 
concept. It is setting a high ideal before a teacher to 
insist that he shall realize the meaning of this truth; 
and even if he has realized it in his own mind, it is 
a difficult thing for him to impress it upon the minds 
of his pupils. This represents the highest development 
of the art of education. Mark Hopkins in the past 
generation realized it in almost unrivalled fashion; 
William Graham Sumner exemplifies it conspicuously 
among the teachers of the present day. To be thus 
clear and concrete, so that the student shall understand 
what you say, without letting your concreteness with- 
draw his attention from the general principle, is an 
extremely difficult combination to attain. But it is 

187 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

a confession of weakness if our school authorities let 
themselves be daunted by this difficulty. It is a grave 
mistake if our teachers allow themselves to be content 
with second-class work because first-class work is so 
much harder. It is an absolutely fatal error if we 
shut our eyes to the existence of the best because this 
represents a higher good than most of us can readily 
attain. 

Those who hold these high ideals of education must 
be constantly on the watch for new means and methods 
which shall add to the range of the pupil's power with- 
out degenerating into mere acquisition or intellectual 
dissipation. "More kinds of ability" must be our 
watchword, if we are to resist the ill-judged demand 
for more kinds of knowledge. One of the most impor- 
tant among these modern methods is to be sought in 
manual training. This is as yet in its infancy; but 
already the graduates of manual training schools on 
both sides of the water show by their proficiency in 
subsequent work the admirable results of the system. 
The Boardman School at New Haven is only a few 
years old; but its graduates, in their careers in the 
Sheffield Scientific School, have already proved that 
they have been trained in principles, and can master 
principles better than most of those whose work has 
been with books alone. If we insist that manual edu- 
cation shall be really a training, as its name implies, 
we can avoid the danger, always near at hand, that it 
shall be allowed to degenerate into a dissipation. It 
is of the utmost importance to make, at as early a 
stage as possible in the introduction of this education 
of the eye and hand, that distinction between the de- 
velopment of power and the imparting of knowledge, 
which is so important in matters intellectual. When 

188 



FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENTS IN EDUCATION 

we have once recognized that precisely the same antith- 
esis exists in matters of hand work which has been seen 
in matters of brain work, we shall be able to utilize the 
new methods on lines conservative instead of destructive. 

Finally, I believe that one of the most important 
applications of this idea of power-training is found in 
its extension to the moral side of education. We hear 
a great deal in these days about preparation for citizen- 
ship, and much effort is made to instil into the pupils 
the knowledge necessary for the performance of their 
civic duties. All this is good as far as it goes ; but we 
must remember that in this particular field of education 
every American pupil is preparing to graduate into a 
high school which is coextensive with American polit- 
ical and social life. The whole activity of the citizen 
is a course of higher education in morality — an educa- 
tion which may be rightly directed or wrongly directed, 
used or misused, but in which the citizen is engaged as 
long as he lives. If this is true — and there is no 
question of its truth — any attempt to make informa- 
tion take the place of discipline is a menace to our 
national life for a generation to come. As a prepara- 
tion for the school of national politics, ten hours of 
training in civics are not the equivalent of one minute 
of training in order and obedience. It will be fatal if, 
in our anxiety to develop the one, we should lose sight 
of the paramount necessity of the other. 

Let us then, in our capacity as teachers, never forget 
the importance of power as compared with knowledge. 
Let us not allow the public overestimate of details to 
blind us to the paramount necessity of training in prin- 
ciples. Let us arrange our courses and our examina- 
tions with a view to prevent, rather than to increase, 
the danger of intellectual dissipation. In all the de- 

189 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

partments of our life — the intellectual, manual, and 
moral — let us be true to our primary duty of educating 
not only men and women who know the truth, but men 
and women who have strength to pursue it and determi- 
nation to stand by it under all conditions. 



190 



THE USE AND CONTROL OP 
EXAMINATIONS 

Every practical educator knows that an examination 
has two aspects, — one looking toward the past, the 
other toward the future. It is a means of proving the 
student's attainment in that which has gone before ; it 
is also a means of testing his power for that which is to 
come. It protects our schools against waste of time in 
the days which precede it, by setting a mark which the 
pupil must reach. It protects our colleges against 
waste of time in the days that follow it, by giving us 
a basis on which to group our classes and arrange the 
tasks which are imposed. It is at once a measure of 
proficiency in what has been previously learned, and 
of power for what as yet remains unlearned. 

Unfortunately, these two qualities do not always 
coincide. We have all had experience with pupils who 
have been faithful in the performance of their duties, 
and have acquired that kind of knowledge which 
enables them to pass a well-conducted examination 
creditably, but who do not possess that degree of 
mental training which fits them to go on toward higher 
studies side by side with those whose acquirements may 
be less, but whose grasp of principles is stronger. Pro- 
ficiency in subjects studied during the few months 
previous to the examination is largely a matter of 
memory; and it not infrequently happens that such 

191 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

memory is most highly developed in those very pupils 
who have done comparatively little real thinking for 
themselves. This difficulty may be lessened by skill in 
arranging the examination; but, strive as we may, it 
can never be wholly eliminated. On the contrary, it 
is a thing which is increased by many of our modern 
changes, both in courses of study and in methods of 
examination. 

In many of the older subjects of study the difficulty 
hardly exists at all. Take mathematics, for instance. 
In this group of sciences proficiency in one grade is 
almost synonymous with power to go on with the next. 
There may be a few children with minds so peculiarly 
constructed that they are accurate "lightning calcula- 
tors," and of very little use for anything else; but such 
children are the exception and not the rule. In gen- 
eral, the boy or girl who has mastered the simple 
operations of arithmetic is competent to go on with 
the more complex ones ; while the boy or girl who fails 
in these simple matters shows corresponding unfitness 
for what is more advanced. Similarly, knowledge of 
arithmetic as a whole is a test of fitness to study 
algebra; knowledge of algebra a prerequisite to ana- 
lytical geometry; knowledge of analytical geometry a 
necessity for the student who would go on into the 
differential calculus. What is true of mathematics is 
also true of grammar, and of those older forms of 
linguistic study which were based upon grammatical 
drill as a foundation. With proficiency in the elements 
advanced class-work was made possible and profitable ; 
without it the pupil wasted his own time and that of 
his fellows. 

But with new subjects and with new modes of teach- 
ing this necessary sequence is less marked. In study- 

192 



THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS 

ing literature, or history, or descriptive science, even 
by the methods which are regarded as most modern, 
there is no such connection between attainment in what 
is past and power over what is to come. It is not 
certain that the pupil who remembers the answers to 
the questions which are asked in most of our literature 
examinations thereby proves his fitness to read with 
profit the works which are to follow. It is not suj-e that 
power to remember the facts of history which are taught 
in elementary classes connotes a corresponding power 
to use those facts in advanced studies. It is even less 
probable that the results of a course in descriptive 
science pursued at an early age show any indication of 
power to pursue this subject farther. I do not wish 
to be understood as objecting to modern methods of 
science study. For those who are not going to carry 
these matters to a point where power in scientific 
research is needed, they are a very valuable means of 
general information. But for that minority which does 
need to develop power in research such premature 
acquirements are often a hindrance rather than a help. 
One of the few men in the country who combines high 
attainments in theoretical and practical physics — a 
man eminent alike as an investigator, a teacher, and 
an inventor — is authority for the statement that you 
cannot make a really good physicist out of a boy who 
has been put through a full course of descriptive science 
before he has studied the mathematical principles which 
underlie it. I do not know whether this broad generali- 
zation can be proved. I am inclined to think it an 
over-statement. But the fact that such a statement 
can be made by a responsible man shows that there is 
no necessary connection, but rather a conspicuous ab- 
sence of connection, between acquirements in elemen- 
13 193 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

tary science as now taught, and power to go on with 
that science into classes which do work of a really 
advanced character. 

Side by side with this change in subjects, there has 
been a change of methods of examination. Two genera- 
tions ago a large part of our tests were oral. To-day 
the increased size of the classes has necessitated the use 
of written examinations. That the change has been on 
the whole a salutary as well as a necessary one I do not 
question. In an oral examination the personal element 
is so strongly accentuated that it is almost impossible 
to have a guarantee of fairness in its administration. 
However good may be the intentions of the examiner, 
he cannot always keep himself free from his own pre- 
judgments ; while the absence of any permanent record 
to which appeal can be made prevents us from applying 
a corrective to the wrong impressions of the moment. 
But the effect of the change has been to make the 
examination more exclusively a test of proficiency in 
what is past and to render it less available as a measure 
of power for what is to come. In the oral method, if 
it was well conducted, the examiner found some branch 
of the subject with which the pupil was familiar, and 
there proved or disproved the thoroughness of his 
knowledge. By so doing the examiner could find out 
what the pupil really thought about the subject rather 
than what he more or less mechanically remembered. 
But the written examination, even in the best hands, is 
apt to be a proof of the range of a student's proficiency 
rather than of its thoroughness. In the majority of the 
subjects on which we have to examine, it is almost 
impossible to construct a paper which will test the 
student's reasoning power as adequately as it tests his 
memory. It too often becomes a mere inquiry as to 

194 



THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS 

the extent of the pupil's knowledge. Whenever this 
is the case, it loses the major part of its value as 
a measure of fitness for anything which is to come 
afterward. 

The evils thus far described are felt in all examina- 
tions, no matter by whom they may be conducted. But 
they show themselves with peculiar force whenever the 
student passes out of one school or one stage of his 
educational work and into another. In rising from 
class to class within the limits of a single institution, 
the pupil remains under the charge of a head master, 
who can, to a large degree, correct the evils inherent in 
the examination system. He can direct his subordi- 
nates to base their scheme of promotion on records of 
special work and other matters outside of the scope of 
the examination itself. He can so arrange the course 
of study that entrance to higher grades depends upon 
merit in particular lines rather than on general pro- 
ficiency or faithfulness. When, however, the student 
passes from the control of one authority to another 
independent one, it is very hard to carry any such policy 
into effect. The difficulty is seen at its worst in civil 
service examinations, where a candidate's entrance into 
government employment is made to depend upon tests 
of past acquirement which can, at best, very imper- 
fectly indicate his fitness to serve the country in the 
line which he has chosen. I would not for one moment 
undervalue the good which has been done by the adop- 
tion of the examination system as a basis for appoint- 
ment in our civil service; but I believe it to be 
generally admitted, even among the friends of that 
system, that its value depends upon its effect in elimi- 
nating the grossly incompetent, who rely on political 
influence alone, rather than upon its accuracy in deter- 

195 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

mining the applicant's probable usefulness as a public 
servant. 

The same difficulty exists, though in less degree, in 
the transition from one grade of educational institution 
to another. It is felt in the passage from grammar 
school to high school, from high school to college, and 
from college to professional school. In going from 
grammar school to high school, or from college to pro- 
fessional school, the difficulty is to some extent lessened 
by the fact that there is often a common board of con- 
trol which makes co-operation and consultation easy 
between the authorities of the two parts of the educa- 
tional system. In the passage from high school to col- 
lege, on the other hand, the evil is felt most seriously 
because of the complete separation of control and the 
remoteness of location which so often makes a system 
of personal consultation impossible. 

It is in this application that the problem of examina- 
tions gives rise to the most acute controversy. How 
shall we order our tests of the student's proficiency in 
what is behind him in such a way as to assure ourselves 
of his power to go on with what is before him ? How 
can we arrange to give to the school the necessary free- 
dom in its methods of instruction, to give the college 
the assurance that its pupils will be well prepared for 
their work, and to give the students themselves, as 
they pass from one grade to the other, the certainty of 
reasonably fair treatment ? This is the question which 
is before us. With so many conflicting requirements, 
it is no wonder that there is divergence of opinion with 
regard to the proper answer. 

Three distinct methods have been devised for meet- 
ing this difficulty : — 

First. To make the range of examination questions 

196 



THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS 

wider, so that the student shall have every possible 
chance to show what he knows. 

Second. To supplement the written examination 
paper by other tests, such as certified note books, 
objects produced by previous work, etc. 

Third. To depend on certificates given by the teachers 
who have previously had the candidate in their charge ; 
thus taking the work of entrance examination out of 
the hands of the college authorities and relegating it 
to the preparatory schools. 

The first of these methods has a certain amount of 
merit. A skilful examiner can make a paper so broad 
in its scope that a candidate who knows anything what- 
soever about his subject will find some topic on which 
he is at home. He thus reduces the element of chance 
and renders real help to those candidates who under- 
stand one part of the subject better than another. But, 
unfortunately, this increased range of inquiries may 
prove almost as helpful to the undeserving candidate 
as it does to the deserving. The multiplicity of ques- 
tions gives a great opportunity to the coach who makes 
a specialty of preparing candidates for a particular 
series of tests instead of educating them for their life- 
work. Knowing how wide a range of topics the ex- 
aminer must cover, he can predict, with reasonable 
certainty, some specific things which the paper is likely 
to contain. The chances are that his pupils will do 
well on these questions for which they have been 
specially prepared; and thus the deserving but unskil- 
fully prepared candidate, even though he makes a better 
absolute showing under the system of long papers than 
he did with short ones, finds his relative position even 
worse than it was before. Moreover, the inevitable 
hurry and confusion incident to the attempt to deal 

197 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

with a long paper hurts the deserving student far more 
than it hurts his competitor who has been skilfully- 
crammed for this particular trial. These evils are 
clearly exemplified in the English civil service exami- 
nations. The amount of time and thought which is 
spent on the preparation of papers for these examina- 
tions is very great indeed. There has been an honest 
effort on the part of those in charge to get the very 
best aspirants for the public service of the British 
Empire. Yet, in spite of all these things, it has be- 
come proverbial that success depends upon skilful 
coaching far more than upon intellectual merit or good 
general training. What is true of the English civil 
service examinations is true in only less degree of many 
other European examination systems; and the same 
evils are making themselves felt in this country wher- 
ever we approximate toward the English practice. 

The plan of accepting certified note books to supple- 
ment and correct the results of examinations is essen- 
tially a compromise. It has at once the merits and 
defects which are incident to a compromise system. 
But the arguments which can be urged in its behalf 
can for the most part be urged even more strongly in 
favor of a frank adoption of a certificate system as a 
whole. There is something quite illogical in accepting 
the pupil's record of his own past work, and not accept- 
ing the master's judgment as to the efficiency of that 
work; for, unless the master is a clear-headed and 
honest man, the record is practically worthless, and if 
the master is thus clear-headed and honest, he can 
decide far better than any examining board the degree 
to which the pupil has profited by lectures and experi- 
ments. When once a subject presents such character- 
istics that the examiners confess their inability to judge 

198 



THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS 

of the student's work by the paper which he writes 
under their direction, it certainly seems a rather unnec- 
essary waste of time and strength for them to insist on 
having any paper at all. 

The third method — admission to college on certifi- 
cate instead of on examination — has many advocates. 
I shall not here attempt to discuss its merits and de- 
merits in full. It is a subject which would take for its 
full analysis more time than we now have at command. 

It is unquestionably true that a good preparatory 
school teacher can, in nine cases out of ten, judge of 
the fitness of his pupils to enter college far better than 
any college examining board can possibly hope to do. 
It is also true that the right of admission by certificate 
allows such a teacher a freedom in the choice of 
methods which is of great advantage both to him and 
to his pupils. In spite of these facts, it has disadvan- 
tages which have prevented some of our leading insti- 
tutions from adopting it, and which cause the present 
trend of movement to be away from the certificate 
system rather than toward it. 

In the first place, to take the most obvious objection, 
by no means all of our secondary school teachers are 
good ones. A large number cannot be trusted to give 
certificates. An equally large number — and a more 
difficult class to deal with — are not so good that we 
can safely trust them, nor so bad that we can safely 
refuse to trust them. Under these circumstances the 
colleges have only shifted the seat of their perplexities. 
Instead of selecting their students by an examination, 
they select the teachers whom they are to trust by a 
process less automatic and more invidious than any 
scheme of examinations. 

In the second place the abandonment of an exami- 

199 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

nation system by the colleges takes away an impor- 
tant stimulus for keeping up the standard of admission 
requirements. The competition between masters of 
different schools in preparing their pupils to pass 
examinations has the same sort of mixed effect that 
competition has in any other form of business. It 
causes methods to be adopted which are not always of 
the very highest type ; but it at the same time brings 
out an amount of initiative and energy in teachers and 
pupils which can be attained in no other way. Even 
the college authorities who admit by certificate say 
frankly that they would be very reluctant to have that 
practice become universal. They are free to confess 
that the influence of those colleges which require exami- 
nations is the thing which keeps our best schools up 
to that standard which enables other colleges safely to 
admit their students by certificate. 

Finally — and this is the decisive argument for the 
retention of the old plan — those colleges which insist 
on examinations think that they get a better class of 
students by that means than they would by any other. 
They get those boys who do not shrink from a trial of 
intellectual strength; boys who welcome the chance to 
measure their power with that of their fellows in enter- 
ing college, as they will inevitably be called upon to 
measure it if they seek first-rate successes in later life. 
We all remember the fable of the choice between the 
doors : on the one hand, " Who chooses me shall get 
what he deserves ; " on the other, " Who chooses me 
must hazard all he has." The certificate system at- 
tracts those who would go to the former door; the 
examination system calls to those who are willing to 
venture the latter. We all know the two types and 
their relative merits. 

200 



THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS 

If each of these alternatives thus proves unsatisfac- 
tory, is there not some possible combination which may 
be suggested? 

I venture to believe that such a possibility exists, and 
that it may be found in a classification of collegiate 
requirements into different groups, susceptible of sepa- 
rate treatment. 

If we look at the requirements for admission into any 
of our larger colleges, we shall find that they naturally 
fall into three classes: first, those subjects which are 
required because the student must know them in order 
to have the power to go on with his subsequent studies ; 
second, those which are required because the college 
authorities believe them to be desirable means of attain- 
ing such power; and third, those which are required 
because the men in the secondary schools desire them 
and ask for the moral support of the colleges in pro- 
moting their study. As a notable example of the first 
class we may take mathematics. In our scientific 
schools, and to a less degree in all our colleges, some 
knowledge of mathematics is an absolute necessity for 
the successful pursuit of studies included in the course. 
The pupil must know a certain amount of algebra in 
order to study trigonometry; he must know a certain 
amount of trigonometry in order to be able to pursue 
successfully the arts of railroad surveying or of bridge 
design. The same characteristic holds good of most of 
our language requirements. Every student, whatever 
he desires to make of himself, needs to understand 
something of the use of the English language, because 
without such use all his communications of thought, if 
not his underlying thoughts themselves, are sure to 
lack precision. Any benefit which is expected from 
complex ideas by a man or woman who does not know 

201 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

how to express them, is likely to prove illusory. And 
every student who is to pursue foreign literature in his 
college course must first have a knowledge of the ele- 
ments of the language in which it is written, because 
without such knowledge he will waste his own time 
and that of his fellows. 

Side by side with these requirements which are indis- 
pensable come others of a more auxiliary character. 
Not content with requiring a knowledge of English 
expression, the colleges prescribe the reading of certain 
books in English literature. Not stopping with the 
test of power to read and parse individual passages in 
Latin, the colleges prescribe a certain quantity of Latin 
reading as essential to the purpose in hand. They also 
require with each year an increasing knowledge of 
modern languages, not because the student is neces- 
sarily going to use both French and German in his 
college studies, but because no man is regarded by 
them as fitted for higher education unless he has a 
certain reading knowledge of both these languages. 

There is also a third group of studies required not as 
a necessary basis for subsequent work but as a part of 
the general scheme of secondary education in the coun- 
try, to which it is desirable to give fair recognition. 
So many men in our schools desire to teach histor}^, 
and can teach it well, that they wish this subject to 
be recognized in the college requirements; lest, by a 
failure to recognize it, its position in the schools should 
be degraded. What is true of history is true of a 
great deal of that descriptive science which has so large 
a part in our school courses at the present day. It is 
put in the scheme of requirements for admission to col- 
lege, not so much because of a direct need of the college 
student, nor even because of its indirect bearing on 

202 



THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS 

meeting such a need, as because of a desire on the 
part of the colleges to co-operate with the secondary- 
school teachers by giving due emphasis to all those 
things which they desire to include in their course. 

It is obvious, however, that the attempt to put all 
these different classes of subjects on the same basis 
is quite illogical. The student who by a fair and 
sound test is found radically deficient in studies of the 
first class has no business to go on further. No pupil 
who is ignorant of arithmetic can study algebra without 
injuring himself and his fellow students. No pupil 
who is ignorant of elementary algebra and geometry 
should be allowed to go on with the scientific school 
course, no matter what may be his attainments in other 
lines. In like manner, a knowledge of the essentials of 
English expression and of certain fundamental points 
in those other languages which the student is likely to 
use in his college course is a matter of vital necessity. 
No amount of acquirements and attainments in litera- 
ture can logically be allowed to make up for a deficiency 
at this central point. It is on these subjects that the 
case for college examinations is strongest. This is the 
point at which any deficiency of preparation on the part 
of the candidates will hurt them most. It is also the 
point where an examination system is most feasible; 
where cram counts for least and power for most; where 
the school teacher with high ideals of education has 
least reason to complain of the requirement that his 
pupils should be examined by an independent authority, 
because no method of education which falls short of 
meeting this test can possibly be considered good. 

On the second group of studies — those which are 
auxiliary to the attainment of this power — greater lati- 
tude can be allowed. I should be in favor at once of 

203 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

putting all examinations on the extent of knowledge in 
these auxiliary subjects into the hands of a common 
examining board, in which different groups of educa- 
tors were represented. Whether it would be wise to 
go one step farther and introduce the certificate system 
in subjects of this group, is a matter which I should 
hardly like to prejudge at present. 

In the third group of studies the certificate system 
could be allowed from the very outset. It is just here 
that the arguments for that system are strongest, for in 
this group the possible variety of methods is greatest, 
the difficulties of examination most unavoidable, and 
the reasons strongest for preferring the teacher's judg- 
ment to that of an independent examiner or examining 
board. 

If a phrase is needed to describe the principle on 
which this whole system of division rests, I should for- 
mulate it as follows: Divide our requirements into 
three groups of subjects : first, prerequisites for power 
to go on with collegiate study ; second, attainments aux- 
iliary to such power ; third, attainments chiefly useful in 
the general scheme of education. Let the tests of power 
as to what is to follow be in the hands of those who are 
to have charge of the student in the years which are to 
follow. Let the tests of attainment on what is behind 
be in the hands of those who have had charge of the 
pupil in the years which are behind. 

This combination would have the advantage of reduc- 
ing the number of our college examinations — in itself 
an extremely desirable thing — of preserving a standard 
of quality which schools would compete with one 
another to reach, and of allowing at the same time 
the utmost possible latitude in the methods employed 
by different teachers to bring their pupils up to that 

204 



THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS 

standard. On the other hand it would be attended 
with certain dangers and difficulties. The chief objec- 
tions which are likely to be thus raised may be stated as 
follows : — 

First. The attempt, which has been more than once 
made, to lay special stress on tests of power rather than 
on knowledge — for instance, sight reading of Latin 
and Greek authors, translation of English into Latin, 
etc. — has disappointed the expectation of its advocates. 

Second. In the inevitable uncertainty attending the 
results of entrance examinations — due partly to luck, 
partly to the personal equation of the examiner, and 
partly to the varying physical condition of the candi- 
dates — the substitution of a small number of decisive 
examinations for the very great number now existing 
will cause some candidates to be unjustly rejected who, 
under the present requirements, atone for their defi- 
ciencies in some lines by indication of ability in others. 

Third. The necessary withdrawal from the examina- 
tion scheme of large parts of the work in historj^ 
descriptive science, or English literature will serve to 
give these subjects an apparently inferior position, and 
will result in their neglect in those schools which desire 
to prove their success on the basis of the showing made 
by their candidates in college examinations. 

Let us take up these points in order. 

The first of these objections is, I believe, historically 
well founded. It is, however, based on the experience 
of a time when neither teachers nor examiners knew 
their business as well as they now do. Latin prose 
composition, as taught in the schools of a generation 
ago, was simply a piece of mechanical drill on certain 
fixed phrases, without any infusion of the spirit of the 
language. The examiners, themselves trained for the 

305 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

most part in these same defective methods, set papers 
which were not real tests of power, and encouraged 
cramming of a bad sort. The same thing may be said 
of most of the examinations in sight reading of classical 
authors They furnished no measure of that kind of 
power which is required by the college student in his 
subsequent use of the Latin or Greek language. Many 
of these papers depend far more upon the quick com- 
mand of a vocabulary, at times when the candidate is 
specially nervous, than upon knowledge of linguistic 
structure. In the easy Latin or Greek which is gen- 
erally given out on these papers, the candidate who can 
remember the vocabulary can guess at the structure far 
better than the candidate who knows the structure can 
extemporize the vocabulary. Nor can this difficulty in 
the sight paper be wholly avoided by notes which give 
the meaning of a few words, for those words which 
help one boy may prove useless to another. The partial 
failure of sight papers to accomplish their end proves 
chiefly the defectiveness of the means, and little or 
nothing as to the attainability of the object. 

Of course it may be freely admitted that it would 
require great ability to carry out the proposed plan by 
right methods instead of wrong ones. It would per- 
haps be a number of years before we should know what 
furnished, on the whole, the best means of testing the 
student's power. But I feel quite confident that noth- 
ing which has hitherto been done indicates that the 
question could not be fairly well solved in a reason- 
able time. 

The argument concerning the dangerous fewness of 
the papers under the proposed plan deserves careful 
consideration. Any one who knows the uncertainty 
attending the results of examinations in general, and 

206 



THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS 

of written examinations in particular, will be reluctant 
to reduce the variety of chances given to the student to 
prove in different kinds of papers his probable fitness 
for any course which he desires to undertake. Yet I 
believe that the dangers which arise in this way would 
be more than offset by the safety due to an increased 
care of reading which the substitution of the few papers 
for the many would render possible. If we should 
further extend to teachers of proved ability the oppor- 
tunity to recommend, at the risk of their own reputa- 
tion, for provisional admission to our freshman classes, 
pupils to whom the new system seemed to have done 
injustice, we should have in our hands a check which 
would not be greatly liable to abuse, and which would 
help to protect deserving students from the conse- 
quences of ill luck. 

The objection regarding discrimination between 
studies is perhaps the one which will be most strongly 
urged. Yet I believe this objection to be based on 
what is in the long run not a fault but a merit. 

It is natural enough that a master in a secondary 
school who has special ability in teaching descriptive 
science, whether in the form of physics, biology, or 
history, should wish for the opportunity to prove what 
his pupils can do in collegiate examinations. He will 
urge that if they are not given this opportunity to be 
examined, they will neglect the subjects in such a way 
as to do injustice to him and harm to themselves. It 
may seem hard to tell him that the apparent force of 
these arguments of his is based upon an over-valuation 
of the usefulness of his work to boys and girls who are 
going to college. Yet I believe this to be the truth; 
and if it is truth it should be told plainly. 

I am not underrating the importance of these things 

207 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

in the scheme of secondary education. The pupils who 
are going directly from the high school into practical 
life need a somewhat extensive and therefore somewhat 
superficial study of natural science and human history. 
Most of these pupils must get their knowledge of these 
subjects then if they are to get it at all. But for those 
who are going to pursue these studies afterward, such 
preliminary acquaintance with history and with science 
does not take, with any complete equivalence, the place 
of language or of mathematics. History and natural 
science are studies which mark the culmination of an 
educational course, and which, if over-developed far 
before the close, have a tendency to weaken rather than 
to strengthen the student's powers of application. If 
by giving undue importance to these things in the 
examination system, we add an artificial stimulus to 
their pursuit by boys or girls who are afterward going 
to college, I believe that we delay the advent of a 
reform in our school system which is of vital impor- 
tance to us all. That reform will consist in the separa- 
tion of our classes, both in the grammar schools and in 
the high schools, into groups that are about to finish 
their school days and groups that are preparing to 
advance further. 

In almost all our previous groupings we have tried to 
classify pupils on the lines of their different tastes, real 
or supposed. There is a great deal to be said in favor 
of a different system, which should classify them on 
the basis of the probable duration of the studies. It is a 
false idea to assume that those things which are taught 
to the students whose courses near their end are thereby 
cheapened or made inferior in value; and it is a yet 
worse mistake if, in the effort to avoid such cheapen- 
ing, we put them into a place where they did not really 

208 



THE USE AND CONTROL OF EXAMINATIONS 

belong. Our system of secondary education has reached 
a point of achievement where it can stand on its own 
merits. Those in charge of it recognize that they have 
outgrown the stage where their best usefulness was 
found in being mere preparatory schools. Let us eman- 
cipate ourselves from a set of ideas which are but the 
remnant of a state of things which we have now out- 
grown. Thus, and thus only, shall we obtain the best 
preparation for college, and the fullest development of 
the value and freedom of our secondary education. 



14 209 



YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 

Thirteen years ago my honored predecessor traced 
in his inaugural address the changes which two centu- 
ries had developed in Yale's educational methods and 
ideals, and showed with clearness what were the corre- 
sponding changes in organization which would best fit 
her to apply these methods and approach these ideals. 
What has once been done so well we need not undertake 
to do again. Let us rather proceed to a detailed con- 
sideration of the problems which now confront us in the 
various departments of college and university life. Let 
us formulate the questions which press for solution. 
Let us study the good and evil attendant on various 
methods of dealing therewith. Let us see, as far as we 
may, what lines of policy in these matters of immediate 
practical moment will enable us best to meet the de- 
mands of the oncoming century. 

These problems are for the most part not peculiar to 
Yale. The questions which present themselves to the 
authorities here are in large measure the same which 
arise elsewhere. But the conditions governing their 
solution are different. We may best understand the 
work which Yale has to do if we study the problems in 
their general form, as they come before the whole brother- 
hood of educators as a body ; and then try to solve them 
in the particular form which is fixed by the special cir- 

210 



YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 

cumstances, past and present, which have made Yale 
University what it is. 

Fifty years ago the duties of college administration 
were relatively simple. There was at that time a cer- 
tain curriculum of studies, chiefly in classics and in de- 
ductive science, which the public accepted as necessary 
for the development of an educated man. These studies 
were taught by traditional methods which compelled the 
pupil to perform a considerable amount of work whether 
he liked it or not. The student body was a homoge- 
neous one, meeting in the same recitation rooms day by 
day. The classes readily acquired a spirit of good fel- 
lowship and democracy. Outside conditions favored 
the maintenance of this spirit. Differences in wealth 
throughout the community were less conspicuous than 
they are to-day. College education was so cheap that it 
fell within the reach of all. Most of the students were 
restricted in their means. The few who possessed 
much money found comparatively little opportunity 
for spending it in legitimate ways. Rich and poor 
stood on a common footing as regarded participation 
in the social ambitions and privileges of college life. 
The intellectual education which such a college gave to 
the majority of its students was but an incidental 
service as compared with their education in sterling 
virtue. The institution which could furnish this double 
training met fully the requirements which public 
opinion imposed. 

The first of the disturbing elements which entered to 
complicate the problem of college education was found 
in the development of professional schools. Down to 
the early part of the present century, professional study 
was largely done in private, in the office of some suc- 
cessful lawyer or doctor or in the study of some experi- 

211 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

enced minister. Even when schools of theology, of law, 
or of medicine were established, they at first occupied 
themselves largely with teaching the same kind of things 
that might have been learned in the office by the old 
method. But about the middle of the present century a 
new and more enlightened view of technical training 
arose. It was seen that a professional school did its 
best work when it taught principles rather than practice. 
Instead of cramming the students with details which 
they would otherwise learn afterward, it was found 
much better to train them in methods of reasoning 
which otherwise they would not learn at all. This study 
of principles, to be thoroughly effective, necessarily oc- 
cupied several years. There was a strong pressure to 
introduce the elements of these professional studies into 
the curriculum ; and a demand that when once they were 
incorporated in the college course they should be taught, 
not in a perfunctory way, but with the same standard of 
excellence which was achieved in our best professional 
schools. 

Meantime, apart from these changes in the method of 
technical training, the sphere of interest of the culti- 
vated men of the country was constantly widening. 
The course of college study which satisfied an earlier 
generation was inadequate for a later one. The man 
who would have breadth of sympathy with the various 
departments of human knowledge could not content 
himself with classics, mathematics, and psychology. He 
must be familiar with modern literature as well as 
ancient, with empirical science as well as deductive. 

If we had at once widened the college curriculum 
enough to correspond to the increased range of human 
interest, and lengthened the period of professional study 
enough to give each man the fullest recognized train- 

212 



YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 

ing for his specialty, — if, to quote the old educational 
phrase, we had taught each man something of every- 
thing and everything of something, — the time of univer- 
sity education would have lengthened itself to ten or 
fifteen years. Its complete fruition would have been a 
luxury out of reach of all but the favored few. The 
difficulty could be met only by the adoption of an 
elective system, — a system which ceased to treat the 
college course as a fixed curriculum for all, and gave 
an opportunity for the selection of groups of studies 
adapted to the varying needs of the several students. 

The introduction of these methods of university 
education, necessary as it was, has been nevertheless 
attended with serious dangers and evils. 

In the first place there is apt to be a change in the 
mode of instruction which, while good for the best 
students, runs the risk of proving bad for the ordinary 
ones. The old method of handling large classes in a 
fixed course of study under the recitation system re- 
quired all the students to do a modicum of work, and 
enabled the teacher to see whether they were doing it 
or not. The divisions were adjusted and could be con- 
stantly readjusted with that end in view. The time of 
the instructors was so far economized by the narrow 
range of subjects taught that their attention could be 
properly concentrated on this one point of keeping the 
students up to their work by a daily oral examination. 
But with the increasing number of things to be learned, 
the variation in the size of classes, and the demands 
which the best students now make for really advanced 
teaching, this supervision and concentration is no 
longer possible. The instructor who is teaching small 
groups of selected men who have a particular interest 
in his subject, is forced to content himself with what is 

213 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

little more than a lecture in teaching the larger groups 
of ordinary men to whom the subject has only a general 
interest. A lecture system of this kind is beset with 
perils. It is something of which we have to make use, 
because there are not enough first-rate men in the 
country to teach all the subjects of study which this 
generation demands, in classes of size small enough to 
adapt themselves to the recitation system. The choice 
in many lines of study lies between having recitations 
with fourth-rate men or lectures from first-rate ones. 
I never met a good teacher who really approved of the 
lecture system, or who did not prefer small classes to 
large ones. But these really good teachers are just 
the men that we wish to bring in contact with as many 
students as possible. If we refuse to let them lecture, 
we either confine the benefit of their instructions to a 
few, or increase their hours beyond the possibility of 
human endurance. 

Another evil connected with the elective system is 
the loss of esprit de corps. In a college like West Point 
or Annapolis, where a homogeneous body of men is 
pursuing a common scheme of studies, with a common 
end in view, and with rigorous requirements as to the 
work which must be done by each individual, this 
spirit is seen at its strongest. The place sets its 
character stamp upon every one, — sometimes perhaps 
for evil, but in the vast majority of cases for good. An 
approximation to this state of things was seen in our 
American colleges during the earlier years of their 
history. In many of them it is still maintained to a 
considerable degree. But the forces which maintain it 
are far less potent to-day than they were fifty years ago. 
The community of interests is less, the community of 
hard work is very much less. If this college spirit 

214 



YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 

once passes away, the whole group of qualities which 
we have known by the name of college democracy is in 
danger of passing also. For the increase of wealth in 
the outside world is a perpetual menace to old-fashioned 
democratic equality. If we have within the college 
life not only differences in things studied, but differ- 
ences in enjoyment between rich and poor, we are at 
once in danger of witnessing a development of social 
distinctions and class interests which shall sweep away 
the thing which was most characteristic and most 
valuable in the earlier education of our colleges. Not 
the intellectual life only, nor the social life only, but 
the whole religious and moral atmosphere suffers de- 
terioration if a place becomes known either as a rich 
man's college, or, worse yet, as a college where rich 
and poor meet on different footings. What shall it 
profit us, if we gain the whole world and lose our own 
soul ; if we develop the intellectual and material side of 
our education, and lose the traditional spirit of democ- 
racy and loyalty and Christianity ? 

That there will be an advance in thoroughness of 
preparation for the special lines of work which our 
students are to undertake is a thing of which we may 
safely rest assured. That there shall be a similar 
advance in the general training for citizenship in the 
United States is an obligation for whose fulfilment our 
universities are responsible. The Yale of the future 
must count for even more than the Yale of the past in 
the work of city, State, and nation. It must come into 
closer touch with our political life, and be a larger part 
of that life. To this end it is not enough for her to 
train experts competent to deal with the financial and 
legal problems which are before us. Side by side with 
this training, she must evoke in the whole body of her 

215 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

students and alumni that wider sense of their obligation 
as members of a free commonwealth which the America 
of the twentieth century requires. 

The central problem, which we all have to face, and 
about which all other problems group themselves, is 
this : How shall we make our educational system meet 
the world's demands for progress on the intellectual 
side, without endangering the growth of that which 
has proved most valuable on the moral side ? And it 
is the latter part which demands the most immediate 
attention from a college president, not necessarily be- 
cause it is more important in itself — for where two 
things are both absolutely indispensable, a comparison 
of relative values is meaningless — but because the 
individual professors can, and under the keen competi- 
tion between universities must, attend in large measure 
to the excellence of instruction in their several depart- 
ments, while the action of the university as a whole, 
and the intelligent thought of the univei-sity adminis- 
tration is requisite to prevent the sacrifice of the moral 
interest of the whole commonwealth. 

There are four ways in which we may strive to deal 
with this difficulty : — 

First. By relegating the work of character develop- 
ment more and more to the preparatory schools. Our 
acceptance or non-acceptance of this solution deter- 
mines our attitude toward the problem of entrance 
requirements. 

Second. By striving to limit the occasion for the use 
of money on the part of the student. The necessity 
for such limitation constitutes the problem of college 
expenses. 

Third. By endeavoring to create a body of common 
interests and traditions outside of the college course 

316 



YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 

which shall make up for the diversity of interests within 
it. The most widely discussed, though possibly not 
the most important, point under this head is furnished 
by the problem of college athletics. 

Fourth. By so arranging the work of the different 
departments of study that the variety inherent in the 
elective system shall not be attended with intellectual 
dissipation ; providing the chance for economy of effort 
on the part of the instructor and the assurance of syste- 
matic co-operation on the part of the pupils. This is 
the problem of university organization. 

The plan of relegating the responsibility for character 
development to the preparatory schools has at first sight 
much to commend it. It relieves the college officers of 
the most disagreeable part of their duty, that which 
pertains to matters of discipline, and enables them to 
concentrate their attention on their function as teachers. 
It meets the demands of many progressive men engaged 
in secondary education, some of whom long for an ex- 
tension of their professional functions into new fields 
of activity, while others, justly proud of their success 
in the formation of character under existing conditions, 
desire the additional opportunity which is given them 
if they can keep their oldest boys a year or two longer 
under their influence. The larger the university the 
greater becomes the pressure in this direction. 

But with conditions as they exist at Yale, I cannot 
think it wise to yield to this pressure. If we take a 
year from the beginning of the college course, that year 
will be spent by most of the boys either in a high school 
or a large academy. In the former case we a23proach 
the German or French system of education; in the 
latter the English. A compromise between the two, 
whereby a boy finishes his high school course and then 

217 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

takes the additional year at an academy, is hardly 
admissible on any ground ; the single year is somewhat 
too short to give the intellectual influences of the new 
place to which the boy goes, and far too short to give 
its character influences. I cannot believe that any one 
who has watched the workings of the French or German 
system would desire to see it adopted in this country. 
The passage at an advanced age from the discipline of 
the lyc^e or gymnasium to the freedom of the uni- 
versity, however well it may work in its intellectual 
results, does not produce the kind of moral ones which 
we need. The English system has wider possibilities; 
and for England it does extremely well. But it is 
essentially a product of English conditions, — that is, 
of aristocratic ones. It is an education for a privileged 
class. In America, on the other hand, we wish our 
higher education to remain democratic. We should 
not be satisfied with a system which excluded from its 
benefits the large number of boys who come from insti- 
tutions, public or private, which are situated near their 
own homes, and prepare only small groups for college. 
And even to those who are fortunate enough to come 
from the best preparatory schools, the loss in college 
life would often outweigh the gain in school life. A 
system of influences whose operation terminates at 
nineteen or twenty fixes a boy's moral and social place 
too soon. For the young man who has grown to the 
full measure of his moral stature at this age it is good ; 
for the one who matures later it is distinctly bad. In 
our every-day experience at Yale, as we watch the inter- 
action between school estimates and college estimates 
of character, we can see that whatever postpones a 
man's final social rating to as late a day as possible 
lengthens the period of strenuous moral effort, increases 

218 



YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 

the chance of continued growth, and is of the largest 
value to the boys and men of the best type. 

The abandonment of the responsibility for forming 
character would have its disadvantages for the univer- 
sity no less than for the students. A boy's loyalty will 
remain where his moral character has formed itself. 
The devotion and sentiment of the Englishman play 
not so much about Oxford or Cambridge as about Eton, 
Harrow, and Rugby. Universities which derive their 
prestige and their wealth from the past rather than 
from the present may perhaps endure this deprivation. 
Not so the American college or university, which looks 
for its strongest support to the loyalty of its alumni. 

With the desire of secondary school teachers to ex- 
tend their work I have the strongest sympathy. To the 
idea of co-operation between universities and schools, 
whereby each shall arrange its teaching with reference 
to the other's needs, I am fully and absolutely com- 
mitted, and purpose to do all that I can to further it. 
A university fulfils its true function only when it thus 
seeks and gives aid outside of itself. But I believe 
that the chance for this extension, this co-operation, 
and this leadership is to come through the freer inter- 
change of thought and interchange of men between 
school teaching and university teaching, rather than 
through a transference of subjects from one to the 
other. I believe that with the conditions as they exist, 
the true policy for our university with regard to 
entrance requirements is to find out what our secondary 
schools can do for their pupils, intellectually and 
morally, and adapt our requirements to these condi- 
tions. Detailed questions as to what specific subjects 
we shall require must be subordinated to this general 
principle of requiring those things, and only those 

21-9 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

things, wliicli the schools can do well. To know 
whether we can substitute French or German for 
Greek, we must know whether any considerable num- 
ber of schools teach French or German in such a way 
as to make it a real equivalent for Greek in the way 
of preparation for more advanced studies. Unless we 
keep our minds on this principle, we shall be in per- 
petual danger of receiving students who have been 
crammed for their examinations rather than trained for 
their work. 

The second of our leading problems is the question 
of college expenses. Though the increase in this re- 
spect is less than is popularly supposed, there is no 
doubt that it is large enough to constitute a serious 
danger. It is far from easy to see how this danger is 
to be avoided. It is all very well to talk of returning 
to the Spartan simplicity of ancient times, but we can- 
not do it, nor ought we to if we could. We cannot, 
for the sake of saving the cost of a bathroom, return to 
the time when people took no baths. Nor can we meet 
the difficulty by furnishing the comforts of modern 
civilization and charging no price for them. If the 
university could afford to do it for every one, it might 
be well ; but to do it for some and not for others works 
against the spirit of democracy. It may readily become 
a form of pauperization. This same danger lurks in 
the whole system of beneficiary aid, as at present given 
in Yale and in most other colleges. To avoid this 
danger, and at the same time give the men the help 
which they fairly ought to have, we need not so much 
an increase of beneficiary funds as an increase of the 
opportunities for students to earn their living. Aid in 
education, if given without exacting a corresponding 
return, becomes demoralizing. If it is earned by the 

220 



YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 

student as he goes, it has just the opposite effect. This 
holds good of graduate scholarships and fellowships no 
less than of undergraduate ones. There is no doubt 
that in the somewhat indiscriminate competition of dif- 
ferent universities anxious to increase the size, real or 
apparent, of their graduate departments, there has been 
an abuse of these appliances which, unless promptly 
corrected, threatens the future of the teaching profes- 
sion with an over-abundant influx of inferior men. 

The true policy in the matter of expenses and bene- 
ficiary aid would appear to be as follows : — 

In building our new dormitories and other appliances 
connected with the daily life of the students, we should 
strive to use the kind of intelligent economy which any 
but the richest man would use in building a house for 
himself. We should construct them on the standard 
set by our homes rather than by our clubs. In this way 
we should create a general level of average expense in 
the college life which would attract rather than repel the 
boy who has to make his own way. We should indeed 
welcome beautiful buildings, given to the university as 
memorials of affection; but we should strive to have 
them so designed that their beauty may be a means of 
enjoyment to the whole community. 

Tuition should be remitted with the utmost free- 
dom to all those who maintain a respectable standing. 
Such tuition should be either earned by service or re- 
garded as a loan, — a loan without interest, if you please, 
or at any rate at a purely nominal interest charge, and 
payable at the option of the holder, but in its essence a 
loan, — a thing to be paid ultimately, unless disease or 
death intervene. By establishing a sj^stem of sach re- 
payment we could give aid far more universally than we 
now do, could perhaps lower the tuition fees in general, 

221 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

and could avoid a system of fraud which is at present 
practised somewhat extensively on our colleges. 

Every scholarship in excess of the tuition fees, 
whether for undergraduates or for graduates, should be 
distinctly in the nature of a prize for really distinguished 
work, or a payment for services rendered. I am aware 
that there are great practical obstacles which oppose the 
carrying out of this view, and I do not feel sure how 
quickly Yale will be in a position to put it into effect ; 
but that it is a desirable ideal and goal there appears to 
be no doubt whatever. Remuneration rather than pau- 
perization should be the principle underlying such aid. 

Above all things — and this is a matter in which 
we need the co-operation of persons outside as well as 
inside the university — the utmost study should be be- 
stowed on the possibility of utilizing the powers of the 
students in such a way that they can be of service to the 
college community and the world at large, and thus earn 
the aid which is given them. The problem is a most 
difficult one ; too difficult even to be analyzed in the 
brief space here available. But the amount of pro- 
gress made already, in the few experiments which have 
been seriously tried, leads me to believe in an almost 
unbounded opportunity for ultimate development of this 
idea. 

Our third group of problems is connected with the de- 
velopment and preservation of common student interests 
and student life outside of the immediate work of the 
classroom. 

Of all these interests, the most fundamental are 
those connected witli religious observances and reli- 
gious feeling. Yale is, and has been from the first, 
a Christian college. All her institutions show this 
throughout their structure. This was the dominant 

222 



YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 

purpose in Yale's foundation ; and the work and 
thought of the children have conformed to the wish 
of the fathers. What changes time may bring in the 
outward observances, or how soon it may bring them, I 
know not. The question of compulsory attendance on 
religious exercises is one which is seriously discussed 
by the faculty, the students, and the graduates ; nor 
can we predict the outcome of such discussion. But 
this I know : that it is approached by all, young as well 
as old, in a spirit of wise conservatism and reverence 
for past usage, and that no change will be made unless 
it shall surely and clearly appear to those in authority 
that we are but modifying the letter of a tradition for 
the sake of preserving its spirit. 

Even in matters of far less fundamental importance 
we may, I think, wisely preserve this same spirit of 
conservatism. An ancient university has a great ad- 
vantage in the existence of a body of time-honored 
usages and traditions. Some of these it inevitably 
outgrows as time goes on. But a large majority serve 
a most useful purpose in binding the students together 
by bonds none the less real because so intangible. 
Such college customs and traditions we should main- 
tain to the utmost. Even where they seem artificial or 
meaningless we should be careful how we let them go. 
It is not inconsistent with the spirit of progress to value 
them highly. Edmund Burke was one of the most 
liberal and progressive men of his century ; yet Burke 
was the man who set the truest value on those forms of 
the English constitution which, as he himself avowed, 
were rooted in prejudice. The constitution of Yale 
to-day, with its strange combination of liberty and priv- 
ilege, of prescriptive custom and progressive individ- 
ualism, has not a few points of resemblance to Burke's 

223 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

England. I can avow myself a conservative in the 
sense that Burke was a conservative ; with him, I 
should hesitate to cast away the coat of prejudice and 
leave nothing but the naked reason. 

Another group of cohesive forces which strengthens 
the influence of a university upon its members is con- 
nected with college athletics. The value of athletic 
sports when practised in the right spirit is only equalled 
by their perniciousness when practised in the wrong 
spirit. They deserve cordial and enthusiastic support. 
The time or thought spent upon them, great as it may 
seem, is justified by their educational influence. But 
side by side with this support and part of it, we must 
have unsparing condemnation of the whole spirit of 
professionalism. I do not refer to those grosser and 
more obvious forms of professionalism which college 
sentiment has already learned to condemn. Nor do I 
chiefly refer to the betting by which intercollegiate con- 
tests are accompanied, though this is a real and great 
evil, and does much to bring other evils in its train. I 
refer to something far more widespread, which still 
remains a menace to American college athletics, — the 
whole system of regarding athletic achievement as a 
sort of advertisement of one's prowess, and of valuing 
success for its own sake rather than for the sake of the 
honor which comes in achieving it by honorable methods. 
I rejoice in Yale's victories, I mourn in her defeats ; but 
I mourn still more whenever I see a Yale man who 
regards athletics as a sort of competitive means for 
pushing the university ahead of some rival. This is 
professionalism of the most subtle and therefore most 
dangerous sort. I know that the condition of athletic 
discipline in a college makes a difference in its attrac- 
tiveness to a large and desirable class of young men, 

224 



YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 

and rightly so. Whether a victory or a series of vic- 
tories makes such a difference, and increases the num- 
bers that attend the university, I do not know and I do 
not care to know. The man who allows his mind to 
dwell on such a question, if he is not tempted to violate 
the ethics of amateur sport, is at any rate plaj-ing with 
temptation in a dangerous and reprehensible way. 1 
am glad to believe that our colleges, and our nation as 
a whole, are becoming better able to understand the 
love of sport for its own sake. The growth of this 
spirit through three generations has relieved English 
universities of some of the problems which to-day con- 
front us in America. To the growth of this spirit we 
must ourselves trust for their solution here. I am 
ready heartily to co-operate in an}^ attempts that other 
colleges may make to lay down clear rules for the prac- 
tice of intercollegiate atliletics, because the absence of 
such co-operation would be misunderstood and would 
give cause for suspicion where none ought to exist. 
But I cannot conceal the fact that the majority of such 
rules can only touch the surface of the difficulty ; and 
that so far as they distract attention from the moral ele- 
ment in the case which is beyond all reach of rules, 
they may prove a positive hindrance to progress. If we 
can enter into athletics for the love of honor, in the 
broadest sense of the word, unmixed with the love of 
gain in any sense, we may now and then lose a few 
students, but we shall grow better year after year in all 
that makes for sound university life. 

Last in order of discussion, though perhaps first in 
the imminence with which they press upon us for solu- 
tion, are some of the problems of university organiza- 
tion, on whose proper treatment depends that economy 
of effort and utilization of financial resources which is 
16 225 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

necessary for the efficient working of the institution as 
it stands and for its growth in the immediate future. 

Yale's organization differs somewhat fundamentally 
from that of most other American universities. It is a 
group of colleges whose property is held in the name 
of a single corporation, but whose management is, by 
tradition and in some slight degree by legal authority, 
located in the hands of separate faculties. In this 
respect Yale is not without points of resemblance to 
Oxford or Cambridge. I shall not try to discuss 
whether this system is on the whole a good one. It 
is here, and we cannot for the present change it. Like 
all other systems, it has its advantages and its disadvan- 
tages. The advantages are those which are possessed 
by local government everywhere, — an independence of 
initiative; a loyal spirit among the members of the 
several faculties which is the natural result of such 
independence; a sort of natural grouping of the stu- 
dents under which a common set of rules can be made 
for each department, and the evils of too great freedom 
may be avoided. The independence of initiative has 
manifested itself in the development of new methods 
of instruction, like those of the Sheffield Scientific 
School in the past, or the Department of Music in the 
present. The loyalty has been exemplified over and 
over again in the readiness to work for salaries even 
more conspicuously inadequate than those which have 
been paid at other universities, by men who seek their 
reward in the possibilities of future greatness. This 
history of disinterested effort for future rather than 
present reward has repeated itself in each department 
of instruction. The effect of the grouping of the stu- 
dents in separate departments has shown itself in the 
preservation of that esprit de corps which Yale has 

226 



YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 

succeeded in maintaining, I believe, to a greater degree 
than any other university of the same magnitude. 

On the other hand the system has the disadvantages 
which everywhere pertain to a scheme of independent 
local government. There is sometimes a difficulty in 
carrying the whole university sharply forward into any 
definite line of policy, however strongly it may be 
demanded. There is yet more frequently a lack of co- 
ordination in courses ; the work of each of the separate 
parts or schools having been originally devised with 
reference to the needs of members of that school rather 
than to those of the university as a whole. And finally, 
there is a certain amount of duplication of appliances 
which involves some actual loss of economy and makes 
the impression on the public of causing even more loss 
than really exists. Especially severe does this loss 
seem to some of the most zealous members of the pro- 
fessional schools, who believe that by combining the 
work of their opening years with that of the later years 
of the Academic Department or Sheffield Scientific 
School, they can serve the University and the cause 
of learning with far more fulness and freedom than 
at present. 

Reform under these circumstances can only be the 
result of unconstrained discussion and intelligent nego- 
tiation. The best possibilities lie not in the exercise 
of authority but of diplomacy. The effort to impose 
a prearranged policy is likely to prove futile. We 
cannot insist on an external appearance of harmony 
without losing more than we gain. To say that the 
Scientific School ought to have a four years' course 
because the Academic Department has one, or to insist 
that the Academic Department should withdraw from 
the teaching of natural science because the Scientific 

227 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

School has made such full provision for it, serves only 
to retard the movement toward co-operation. The 
president who would succeed in establishing real 
harmony must occupy himself first with providing 
the means to lead men to a mutual understanding, 
rather than with predicting the results which should 
follow. 

Foremost among the means which we must use is free 
and unreserved discussion of principles. Even within 
the departments such discussion has been by no means 
so universal as it might have been. In more than one 
of them there has been a tendency, both in matters of 
administration and of educational policy, to rest con- 
tent with a compromise between conflicting interests, 
rather than a reconciliation of conflicting views. A 
typical result of this policy has been seen in the course 
of study in the Academic Department, where for many 
years the so-called elective system was really not a 
system at all, but the haphazard result of competition 
between the advocates of different lines of instruction, 
— a thing which all unite in desiring to reform. With 
a reasonable degree of diplomacy and patience the task 
of reform in cases like this should not prove a hard 
one. 

Still less adequate has been the interchange of ideas 
between the different departments. Under the old sys- 
tem the several faculties have had no organized means 
of discussing subjects of common interest, or even of 
learning one another's views. The establishment of a 
university council for such interchange of thought is an 
imperative necessity. What will ultimately prove the 
best form and constitution for such a council can only 
be a matter of conjecture. For the present, at any 
rate, such a body is likely to be for the most part 

228 



YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 

deliberative in its functions. Whatever else such a 
body may do or fail to do it can prevent manj^ of the 
misunderstandings and cross purposes which arise from 
imperfect information, and can thus contribute to the 
successful transaction of all business that is possible by 
preventing attempts at the impossible. 

In the second place, we must so use those funds 
which are at the disposal of the central administration 
as to make it an object for men in the different depart- 
ments to co-operate at those points where the absence of 
such co-operation does most harm. 

As far as elementary teaching is concerned, the waste 
from having the same subject taught in two or more 
departments may be more apparent than real. It in- 
volves no very great loss to teach elementary chemistry 
in two independent sets of laboratories if both labora- 
tories are always kept full of students. The waste 
comes in thus teaching advanced chemistry where there 
are relatively few students and where there is much 
need of specialization. Under such circumstances the 
existence of separate laboratories tends to prevent 
proper division of labor. Under such circumstances 
duplication is a waste and co-ordination a necessity. If 
the material appliances for higher education are not the 
property of any one department, but stand in relation 
to the university as a whole, the instructors of the 
different departments tend of their own free will to 
co-operate with one another in the higher instruction 
in their several branches. Under proper management, 
institutions like the Peabody Museum or the Win- 
chester Observatory tend thus to systematize instruc- 
tion at the point where such an effect is most needed. 
With a very moderate increase of endowment, properly 
applied, I believe that the same sort of harmony can be 

229 



THE EDUCATION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN 

attained in many other lines of instruction. Among 
the achievements of my predecessor in office there is 
none so wide-reaching in its effects as the development 
of a large university fund which, without threatening 
the independence of the several departments, can be 
used to provide means for promoting unity of action 
where such unity is indispensable. 

In the English universities the teaching is in large 
measure done by the several colleges, while the exami- 
nations are, with few exceptions, the affair of the 
university. It seems probable that the development of 
Yale in the future may be just the reverse of this ; the 
several colleges taking charge of the examinations and 
of those more elementary studies whose control natu- 
rally connects itself with the control of examinations, 
while the distinctively teaching appliances come, to a 
constantly greater extent, into the hands of the univer- 
sity authorities. Under such a system we should have 
a well-ordered scheme of local government, where each 
department could make its own rules, prescribe the 
conditions of entrance and graduation, and be subject to 
the minimum of interference from without; but where 
at the same time the instruction would be so ordered 
that students whose course lay under the control of one 
faculty could yet enjoy to the fullest possible extent 
the teaching provided by another, and where, as the 
subject of study became more and more advanced, the 
distinction of separate faculties or colleges would dis- 
appear altogether. 

Such are, in brief outline, a few of the problems 
which we have inherited from the past. It would be 
indeed a large burden had we not also inherited from 
that past an inspiration yet larger. Yale's seal bears 
the motto, "Light and Truth;" Yale's history has been 

230 



YALE PROBLEMS, PAST AND PRESENT 

worthy of its signet. Never have there been wanting 
torch-bearers to take the light from the hands that re- 
linquished it. In this place, hallowed by the deeds of 
our fathers, all words of formal acceptance of the duties 
which they have left us are meaningless. It is a God- 
given trust: may God bless the issue! 



231 



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